Even in a small city, even at the municipal level, government is challenging to deal with. Navigating any large complex bureaucracy requires skill, experience and patience. It’s no wonder that many residents have frustrating experiences with City Hall.
The Neighbourhood
The neighbourhood is a more accessible unit of political organization. Certain issues don’t need city council involvement. Things like backyard chickens could be decided neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Certain neighbourhoods may hate the idea, but others might be willing to experiment. Likewise, capital decisions related to parks are made either by council or staff. Council budgets a set amount for parks maintenance, but neighbourhoods could conceivably choose for themselves what to prioritize.
Divesting some of council’s power to neighbourhoods would lessen council’s heavy workload. It would also help neighbourhoods by giving them a greater say on local issues. Each neighbourhood has its own culture. Let’s work to build on these neighbourhood identities. We like to call Medicine Hat—a Community of Choice. Let’s allow neighborhoods more freedom to develop their distinct cultures.
But we need to organize at the neighbourhood level first to build alternative decision making structures. It’s not as simple as creating mini-councils on the neighbourhood level, though organizations like the South East Hill Neighbourhood Association are one part of it. There are digital tools we can use to experiment with direct democracy on a small scale or crowd source questions of prioritization.
Councillor is supposed to be a part-time job, but even working at this full-time I couldn’t keep up. It’s not just that this was my first term. There are structural reasons for this. One of them is that too much decision making power is concentrated in City Council and City Hall. That causes a bottleneck and the general unresponsiveness of City Hall. If you’ve got a good idea—even a small simple one—and you’ve shared it with city council it’s likely gone nowhere. It’s not anyone’s fault. The reality is that council and staff are inundated with ideas, but lack the structure and resources to act on them.
The SE Hill
We need a neighbourhood proof-of-concept. I’ve spent four years learning as much as I could about City Hall. I’m going to use that knowledge to begin in my own neighbourhood—the SE Hill.
City council needs help in shouldering the burden of leadership. Letting neighbourhoods work on smaller issues frees up council to better focus on long term strategic thinking.