Sep 21, 2017
Someone called me last week and asked me this question. I get why he asked—we all want to be represented by someone who shares our values. And signalling our political party is an easy way to do that, but this question also misses the point.
What I appreciate about municipal government is that decisions rarely come down to ideology.
I would bet that a majority of current councillors would describe themselves as fiscal conservatives. Yet, Medicine Hat has accumulated $100 million more in debt over the past 5 years. (Our total debt is $304 million.) That is on top of the millions in reserves we’re spending to cover our operating budget gap. Does that sound like a conservative council?
Medicine Hat is one of the most conservative cities in Alberta. Yet, we have spent the last few decades using our natural gas dividend to provide us with high services and low taxes while saving little. Does that sound like a conservative city?
The questions that arise before council can rarely be solved by relying on ideology. The transit issue is a good example. We have right and left leaning councillors, yet they all collectively made a costly mistake here. Simply voting for someone who shares your political values is no guarantee of good municipal decisions.
I understand that mistakes happen and that it’s easy to criticize from the sidelines. I’ve been watching these councillors for three years and they are all good people with more experience as councillors than I. But when experienced councillors make a mistake we need to understand how that happened. What we need is a thoughtful reflective explanation from city council.
What comments they have made leads to even more questions. Most of the comments suggested staff weren't clear with council—that they had a great plan that would increase ridership, improve accessibility, and reduce cost—exactly what council asked staff to do. But it seems that council simply took staff at their word.
Councillor Les Pearson commented on the transit rollout on Friday in the MH News. He said “so much was being presented to council that it was difficult to research earlier documents to refer to immediately. I believe our decision was based on incomplete information.”
Councillor Pearson’s comments leads to other questions:
Why wasn’t the right information available to this councillor?
Do all councillors feel this way?
Did any receive the correct information?
Did they know they had incomplete information when they voted?
Has this happened on other issues?
Councillor Jim Turner, the most consistent voice for fiscal restraint, said Monday night that staff told him the new system would be “much more efficient, with more transfer points, it would be so great it would increase ridership and cut down on the amount of people needing special transit.” The new transit system was also supposed to save taxpayer money. The reversal will cost us more money (not to mention the lives it disrupted). Conservative thinking and values didn’t help us in this instance. Councillor Turner is a good councillor, but in this case he spoke as if city council didn't have any responsibility to vet plans brought to council.
Other councillors like Cllr. Friesen and Dumanowski said that staff had the best of intentions, but the new system just wasn’t working. But everyone always has the best of intentions. Council made it seem as if this transit system was just something that happened to them. They are the ones in charge and have the ultimate responsibility here.
No wonder the CAO was upset. She was shaking her head at times while councillors were speaking. It was obvious she disagreed with their characteristization.
Simply saying I’m a conservative or liberal might help me get votes, but it won’t help me deliver on my election promises. This is why I’ve attended council meetings for three years. Without understanding the nuances of city governance and city planning it’s hard to follow through on election promises.
“Cities are about making decisions through a proper process.”
Democracy is all about trust. Trust in our fellow citizens. Trust that our collective will is good. Trust in the process. In the process of our institutions. In the process of council. So when mistakes happen we need to reexamine the process. When residents lose trust in city processes from the transit rollout to the Veiner Centre to the bidding process to effective council oversight we need to address these issues and fix them.
When councillors say there were missing information on the new transit rollout that’s a big problem with our city’s decision making process. How can we fix that? How can we help councillors understand when they’re missing information?
We will need to trust each other even more over the next few years. The transit issue is easy to understand and easy to criticize because the problems have been clear—people can’t get where they need to go. But as important as transit is, it’s also the first of many other challenges. The new transit system was intended to close the $15 million budget gap by $650,000 per year. We’re back to finding a way to close this gap.
What happens when we review other departments? Cuts to the police service? The Chief of Police just outlined the increasing challenge of dealing with drugs in the city and rising property crime. There has been a 400% increase in methamphetamine and 700% increase in heroin siezures. Cuts to firefighters? They’ve had a busy summer. Not to mention the high risk of large grass fires like we saw last week in Bindloss.
It’s not about conservative or liberal. It’s not just about cutting services or raising taxes. It’s about appropriate planning in partnership with city staff across all departments. It’s about giving departments enough time to implement changes. It’s about clearly communicating to the public what the risks and tradeoffs are with each choice and giving the public time to adjust.
It’s not simply acknowledging that mistakes were made, but a thoughtful analysis of what went wrong and how to avoid the same mistakes in the future.
“I want to be careful about what I promise. It’ll be hard. We can fix things, but it won’t happen overnight. ”
This city can do great things when we plan well. Read this column on my favorite city park—Central Park.