Comment
Coming of age
Our municipality took a profound and determinative step toward adulthood this summer. There was no ceremony. No celebration. Indeed, one had to look closely to see that something had changed at all. The unassuming document was tucked away—the sixth item in a July council agenda. Yet its quiet arrival marks an important milestone in the short life of this municipality. The toddler is becoming an adult.
The object of this transformation is a document titled CAO Update: Second Quarter (Mid- Year) Report written by the County’s Chief Administrative Officer, Marcia Wallace. It is a discussion and analysis of the business of Prince Edward County—the issues, the challenges, and the significant key moments of a tumultuous first six months of 2020. It goes beyond the numbers to provide a clear-headed account of where this organization is today, how it got here and where it is going tomorrow.
In twelve, information-packed pages (found here), the CAO lays out in a clear and readable way how the municipality is managing through the pandemic, touching every aspect of this gangly and complicated business.
To understand the significance of this transformational moment, it is necessary to go back to 1998.
Prince Edward County was utterly ill-prepared to become an amalgamated municipality 22 years ago. It was like a trust-fund kid who had suddenly been orphaned. A healthy allowance, tons of responsibility—but lacking the basic wherewithal to look after themselves, let alone a multi-million dollar business.
The folks chosen to lead the newly formed organization lacked the prerequisite education, training, and expertise to run an organization of this size. Worse, they didn’t have the experience to know what they didn’t know. For some of these people, amalgamation felt liberating. Elevating. They dreamed of big shiny new offices, plush chairs, and legions of support folk. They read Municipal World magazine and played make-believe for a few years.
Now, it is wrong and unfair to paint all these folks with the same brush, for there were undoubtedly some who worked diligently to learn their file and to do their job as best as they were able. There were just too few of them. They were good people, with good intentions, but most were simply in way over their heads—the product of a poorly planned and implemented amalgamation project.
It would be a full decade before professional managers began to be recruited into the ranks of finance, works and such. This was marked by the arrival of clear and measurable financial reporting. Until then, management budgets had little relationship to the real world. Each year, management went to council seeking an increase to last year’s budget, but absent any knowledge—or a hint—of what was actually spent. Or needed. Or justified. Or anything. Fantasy, was stacked on illusion.
But by the end of the first decade of the millennium, clear and readable financial reports were beginning to emerge. Council and constituents had finally escaped from the dark age. Anyone interested, or curious, could now see how much the municipality spent, how much it increased over the year before, and ask for an explanation for how their taxpayer dollars were spent. It seems obvious and fundamental now, but this base-level accountability has only been a function of County government for a little more than a decade.
The numbers, however, only go so far. The business of a single-tier municipality is complex, with many awkward and often unrelated tentacles—roads, waterworks, parks, policing, fire services, waste management and such— each functioning within an ever-shifting landscape of regulations, compliance standards and pressures unique to that service
Financial reporting provides the foundation for government accountability. It is the what. But it can’t tell you why. Or how. Pages of numbers and charts can reveal successes or failures, but may say little about how it happened and what it means for tomorrow and the next day.
To do this, financial reports in other settings (with businesses of this scale) come side by side with management’s discussion and analysis. The context to the numbers. An explanation of what transpired over the various operations to produce the results. It is the necessary partner to the financial reports for proper accountability.
CAO Wallace’s half-year update provides the missing context. It is clear. Logically presented. And thorough. While its purpose is a summary or overview, the CAO Update offers detail where it is most needed. It alights on each aspect of the organization—highlighting successes (H.J. MacFarland Memorial home comes in for specific praise for managing expertly through a deadly pandemic) without shrinking from the blemishes.
It won’t answer every question. And not all the explanations are entirely satisfactory. But it does enable residents, council members and other stakeholders to ask smarter questions. To seek better responses. To take a measure of the scale of County operations. Understanding how many things might go wrong helps to illuminate the achievement that so few do.
The CAO Update gives every resident the tools they need to examine their local government—to understand in a reasonably granular way what went right, what went wrong—and how it was addressed.
I expect it will take time for the effects of this change to permeate the community—we have become accustomed to a scattershot, unfocused approach to accountability in our community. We are rather fond of lobbing grenades via social media or elsewhere with generalized discontent. Unhappiness in many forms is regularly dumped on the steps of Shire Hall.
But a serious set of financial documents paired with a probing discussion and analysis of the activities over the previous six months should, in time, displace the random with the pointed concern. The frivolous with the substantial. The juvenile with the mature.
Kids. They grow up so fast.
Comments (0)