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Risk managers
They tie our kids’ skates. They urge them to try just a little harder. Until they are sailing down the ice under their own power. They are the folks who head out with pruners and saws to cut back the overgrown brush on the Millennium Trail. So that others can walk, cycle or motor along without tangling with buckthorn creep. They are the folks who cut vegetables by the bushel load so that others might eke out another week on rickety finances. They are the folks who organize and do the hard work involved in every parade, at every community event and every social gathering in public spaces.
This municipality has a message for them: Please stop. And if you won’t stop, please don’t do anything that involves walking, lifting, carrying, climbing or constructing on municipal property. Failing that, we have a waiver of liability we need you to sign.
The risk is too great. This is the culture that has bound up Shire Hall. It is impossible to overstate the role of volunteers in Prince Edward County—everything we know as culture, recreation or our community has been built on the backs of folks who give willingly of their time and energy. To make the place they live just a bit better. It has always been this way. And while our municipality says it values volunteers and the contribution they make to our community—their actions say the opposite.
Last week, this municipality summoned recreation committee volunteers from every corner of the municipality to Shire Hall. They then subjected them to a two-hour long lecture on managing risk. Here they were instructed, by the County’s insurance underwriter, they each have a role to play as risk managers for the municipality. That they, as volunteers, are to “identify the risks” and “potential sources of liability”. Armed with this assessment, these volunteers must then analyze and assess the risk level according to a risk management matrix prescribed by the underwriter. This is how much this municipality values its volunteers.
They learned several methods of managing risk. The number one method—and most foolproof—is “don’t do it”. That’s right. Just don’t do anything on municipal property and everything will be alright.
But if that isn’t possible, limit the risk to the municipality with strict supervision and insist that volunteers are bound in safety harnesses and wearing helmets. This may seem a bit extreme if you’re making pancakes in the town hall, but, you know, you can’t be too safe.
Perhaps the most deliriously bent method to reducing risk prescribed by the insurance rep is to “transfer the risk to a third party”. This means getting volunteers to sign a waiver disavowing any claim against the municipality should they be injured cutting vegetables, trimming brush or tying skates.
Better yet, insist each volunteer sign a contract to this effect. Or, failing that, consider the creation of permitting bureaucracy, barring any volunteer activity until they take out a permit, pay the requisite fee, take the necessary training, and sit tight until the machine spits it out.
Previously risk management haranguing was saved for elected officials. But hauling in volunteers for this type of one-sided re-education is a new twist, and is especially grotesque.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the municipality hearing from its insurance underwriters from time to time, to understand what we are paying for and why. Understanding the levers that drive our insurance premium can help our leaders balance costs with risk exposure. Burdening volunteers with managing the municipality’s risk exposure, however, is self-defeating.
To be clear, it is in our insurance underwriter’s direct financial interest that we take no risk at all. Ever. They have a point of view that is informed by their desire to maximize earnings. Generate premiums. Minimize payouts. They should not be assigning risk management duties upon volunteers in our community.
Understanding this, we ought to be able to compartmentalize their advice and balance it with the specific needs of our community—a community that truly values volunteers, culture, recreation, and public spaces.
It’s not as though we need to invent this. There are surely dozens of municipalities that manage with a set of best practices for volunteer activities—something not written by their insurance underwriters. Let’s find out what they do. Let’s hear from them.
Ultimately, it is about leadership. We must emerge from behind our bureaucrats and functionaries, one day, to set a course for this community. To decide what we want to be and how we shall get there.
That is a bigger issue. For now, this municipality must really stop saying it values volunteers—when their actions consistently say otherwise.
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