Comment
Next steps
What happens next is key. It will surely define the course of County government over the next four years. The choices your council makes in these next few weeks will tell us if it can learn from its missteps or whether it will hunker down in defiance, and become a captive of the machine.
It was a tough budget experience—mostly rookie councillors assessing spending requests in a business they don’t yet understand. They weren’t helped much by some, though decidedly not all, senior councillors who should have been leading the way in scrutinizing spending and uncovering waste, but who instead cheered on the expansion of local government, driving the largest dollar increase in the tax levy in County history.
Here are three ideas to alter this trajectory.
First, Mayor Steve Ferguson must take firm hold of the reins of local government. This is harder than it appears from the outside. The pay is poor—about that of an entry level clerk. The mayor has just a single vote among 14 council members. He must win consensus of colleagues with persuasion. All he has are carrots. Very few sticks. The ceremonial part of the job—ribbon cutting, luncheons and such, demand a lot of time. So it must be tempting to let the governance bit slide—to let the folks being paid several times more each year, carry the water of policy-making and course direction.
This municipality can’t afford another four years of drift. We face many big challenges. This requires leadership. We need Steve Ferguson to seize this role.
This means setting the agenda every week. Determining what are the things he wants to accomplish this week and laying out a plan to get there. And doing it all over again next week.
Too many folks believe their governance role begins and ends around the council table. But to be an effective governing body, as much work must be put in behind the scenes, setting priorities, working to build a consensus among other council members and listening to counter arguments.
This is hard to square with how little we pay our elected officials, yet this is the job they signed up for. We need them to lead.
Leadership begins with the mayor. We remain confident Steve Ferguson can, and will, do this.
Second, council needs to break up Committee of the Whole. The business of government is just too complex, with too many moving parts. It is not unusual that the agenda for the twice monthly Committee meeting to exceed 500 pages. Last week, a smaller agenda ran 272 pages. It is too easy for important matters to get lost.
The County must return to standing committees— each one a specialist in finance, works, development, parks and rec or some other combination.. Enable the chair of each committee to become intimate with the issues, challenges and opportunities of each department, both from inside operations and from users and customers.
There are other ways to achieve this: some cities function with an executive committee or a board of control. The County, however, has a history with standing committees, which is why it is a better choice for this community. For a decade after amalgamation, standing committees did the grinding exploratory work. Listening to deputations. Hearing from managers. There were challenges, but none that could not have been fixed with changes to procedures and firmer enforcement of the rules. Instead, the council of the day swept away standing committees and installed a new structure where every councillor must become versant in every issue, every week—no matter how small or how complex. Where currently overgrown shrubbery on one rural corner gets equal time to the tender of a half million dollar study or piece of equipment.
Standing committees will empower our elected folks to commit their time and focus to scrutinizing the business of government more effectively. (For more on this argument visit the Times website, Comment, Jan 10, 2018.)
And thirdly, council must soon separate the waterworks governance from council and establish a permanent commission, peopled by users, staff and elected folks who have a stake in the system. Waterworks is different than every other aspect of local government, in that it is entirely funded by its users. Yet, 14 council members make decisions and decide policy for this business, even though as few as six have any direct interest in the efficient operation of this utility. (More on this in The Times Comment, Jan 17, 2018)
The County’s waterworks utility consists of six water systems (each vastly different than the other) and two wastewater systems. It serves about 4,000 homes and will spend about $8.2 million in operations and debt repayment this year, and plans another $8 million in capital expenditures.
This is a serious business. It must be governed as such. We have had two ad hoc committees examine our waterworks in the last decade. Each met for months yet only scratched the surface. It is long past time this business benefited from permanent and committed oversight.
The forces arrayed against such structural improvement in our local government are formidable. But many of the newly elected folks understand that they were chosen to change things at Shire Hall. This is their chance to change the ground rules. If they don’t commit to change early, they will become absorbed by the same inertia that rendered past councils ineffective.
If none of these initiatives happens soon, brace yourself for another tough four years.
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