A common point of conflict in Medicine Hat surrounds who gets to make a decision. As the ultimate power in a democracy, the public wants a say. As the elected representatives, City Council wants a say. As the subject matter experts, city staff want a say. It’s not always clear how these three groups should interact.
Process is not everything, but it is a huge part of democracy. Elections are the ultimate example of this. We create a system of free and fair elections, and we live with the outcome whatever it may be. But to fix the problems we see in government we must become more sophisticated participants in democracy. That begins with an awareness that the systems we choose are not neutral. They influence the outcomes.
Good process integrates these groups in a constructive and collaborative way because each adds value to the decision. The current decision making process at City Hall has evolved over decades. With City Hall under financial stress and with many decisions upcoming, it's a good time to familiarize the public with how decisions are made.
Governance vs. operations
City Hall divides responsibilities. Council sets the direction for City Hall, while staff are responsible for day-to-day operations.
Setting direction involves political calculations. Whether City Council decides to build a road or a playground is a political choice. Other decisions are clearly operational. If City Council decides to build a road we don't tell Municipal Works what type of asphalt to use.
Sounds simple enough, but in practice the line between the two isn’t always clear. That means every council and staff works together to set boundaries. A recent example illustrates where the line of control between City Council and staff currently lies.
An example: provincial Covid-19 stimulus money
In August the provincial government gave Medicine Hat some unanticipated Covid stimulus money. The money was tied to specific criteria. Also the projects had to be completed by the end of 2021. Staff studied the issue and presented a list of 4 projects to City Council for approval:
Gas City Campground expansion ($1.3 million)
Multi-use Trail Extension ($1.7 million)
Multi-court Pickleball Facility ($2 million)
BMX track Upgrades ($500k)
At the October 5, 2020 council meeting I voted against these projects. I wonder what staff thought of my vote. To plan and execute $5.5 million worth of projects that wasn’t planned or budgeted is a challenging task. After working hard for weeks identifying projects and determining feasibility a councillor shrugs and votes no.
But from my perspective, the line between council and staff is set so far to the staff side that City Council added nothing of value to the process. The only choice available to me through this process was to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. That is not a real political choice. The reasonableness of these projects is not the issue.
Imagine that the last mayoral election offered only one choice—Ted Clugston. But you could vote yes or no. That’s not a real choice. A real choice involves alternative options, each with their own pros and cons, their own tradeoffs. That is what defines a political decision. No ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choices, only choices. The debate between choices, the articulation of upsides and downsides, is the job of politics, of politicians.
Council’s briefing note
This example is not reflective of all City Council decisions, but many decisions do follow this pattern. This pattern is not an accident. It is a feature of the briefing note structure that some council chose long ago. A choice we have unthinkingly continued.
Briefing notes accompany all council decisions. Here is the briefing note for the stimulus project decision. They provide background and context for an issue. They outline options for consideration. They also always have a staff recommendation.
There are good reasons for staff to weigh in on an issue. Subject-matter-experts help City Council understand the implications of a decision. If City Council tells staff we want a new bridge they’ll tell us how feasible the idea is.
But the staff recommendation also causes problems. For starters, the bureaucracy at City Hall should be a neutral party. Whatever council decides, it’s their job to implement our decision. By weighing in, through a recommendation, on political decisions, staff put their thumb on the scale. Picking a side means the full weight of City Hall is no longer neutral. If a councillor wants to argue for an alternative option I must convince my fellow colleagues, while pushing back against the entire bureaucracy. That is a tall order.
Overturning staff recommendations can and do happen. Most recently with the debate over the tax penalty increase. But this recent debate highlights the problem with structuring briefing notes this way. Reasonable alternatives were absent. Both Mayor Clugston and Councillor Hirsch had reasonable, opposing arguments. Council’s supporting documentation should capture that.
9-0 votes
I attended council meetings for three years before I ran in the last election. I noticed that almost all votes went 9-0. I talked about this during the election. How it was important for alternative choices to be debated.
In a city of sixty thousand, there will be sixty thousand different opinions about how to use taxpayer money. Disagreement is a natural part of democracy. The challenge is fostering healthy debate. Healthy debate strengthens both sides. It helps forge the best version of an argument by refining it. There are few perfect decisions (decisions with no downsides). Healthy debate also helps the public understand what may go wrong with a decision. So we can consciously choose our tradeoffs. It helps prepare the public.
It is the job of political leaders to articulate alternative choices—preferably the best versions of those choices. Those choices are then vigorously debated in public.
But our briefing note structure limits the consideration of choices. People suspect that these 9-0 votes indicate these decisions happen during the closed portion of City Council meetings. What I now realize is that the multitude of 9-0 votes was not because of closed meetings. Rather it was (and is) a consequence of the decision making system we have chosen.
At the end of every briefing note there is a ‘Options Considered’ section. The recommended choice takes up a page or two. Options Considered barely gets a paragraph. Here is that section from the briefing note on the Covid stimulus money.
This essentially says it is unlikely that other projects would meet the criteria. But this is not true. Red Deer ($12 million) used all of their stimulus money on rehabilitating roads. Lethbridge spent $7 million on broadband fibre backbone expansion in the Sherring Industrial Park. $1.2 million on Discovery Play Area for Legacy Park and $8.3 million on lifecycle repairs to existing buildings and facilities.
So of course there are other projects we could have chosen. Those are the types of things that should be debated around the council table. That’s my job. But in order to strengthen the case for a recommended motion briefing notes barely acknowledge alternative choices.
Elevating choices
Alternative choices highlight the difficult tradeoffs in political decisions. In my three years on council I have tried to articulate choices. It’s harder than you might think.
By the time City Council saw staff’s recommendation for the Covid stimulus projects we had only a few weeks before the submission deadline. I worked with staff to explore options, but facing a time crunch it was difficult. I can hardly argue for alternatives without understanding feasibility. And staff are the gatekeepers. Only they could tell me how feasible my ideas were. Gatekeeper is a powerful role to delegate to administration.
In my view council and staff should work collaboratively to prepare options for debate. Only they can do the leg work of short listing projects that can meet the criteria. Only City Council can debate and choose options. Instead, under the current system, staff do that work and they do our job as well.
We can imagine this playing out differently. Staff presents City Council with a list of doable projects, then council works to pick our priorities. It’s not hard to imagine, because soon after the province gave us the stimulus money the federal government also presented Medicine Hat with stimulus funds. With these funds staff presented council with options and we worked together to pick. Later at the same Oct 5 council meeting I voted in favour of the federal Covid projects because I felt I had meaningfully contributed in the decision making process. So it’s not like council and staff don’t know how to make decisions differently. We just need to formalize this process.
For issues big and small, over and over, viable options are absent or minimized. I have notes and other examples from my time on council, but I’ll limit myself to just one more—my favorite one. Every year council manually sets our tax rates, perhaps the most fundamental political decision of government. Every year it comes with a recommended motion. Here is the briefing note from 2018, but every year is roughly the same. Here is the recommendation and ‘Options Considered’.
City Hall has internal information indicating that no residential neighborhood collects enough in taxes to cover their costs. On the other hand non-residential properties (ie commercial) make the city money because we tax those properties more than what they cost the city to service.
Our Municipal Development Plan spends time addressing our billion-dollar infrastructure deficit. It proposes to reduce infrastructure standards in outlying and lower density areas. That’s one way of addressing the infrastructure issue. The other way would be to balance our tax rates to neutrally recover servicing costs.
Options considered—non-applicable? Of course there are options for discussion. In this case critically important options.
Accountability
You can see the difficulty in developing viable options, if left only up to council. We need staff’s help. Regarding the issue of tax rate reform, until we acknowledge there are options I'm left to argue in public against senior administration, paid in the hundreds of thousands, with decades of experience. Who do you think my colleagues will listen to?
This appeal to false authority is a common mistake in formulating arguments. Philosophy 101. Staff are experts, but only in understanding the complex environment of government. Their expertise does not help with political decisions, because either option(s) could work. Remember, there are no right or wrong choices, only choices. Politics is the art of balancing different, but equally important values. Staff and council are a team, but we need better boundaries. That will help everyone.
When City Council allow staff to weigh in on political matters it creates confusion around accountability. One of the reasons it’s hard to hold City Hall accountable is due to this decision-making structure. Staff will say, ‘Well, council made the final decision’. City Council will say, ‘Well, our expert staff recommended this’. Both are right and now neither are responsible because responsibility is diffused.
A suggested fix
I cannot emphasize enough that this isn't anyone's fault. It’s been like this for so long it’s not even intentional. This system causes frustration for the public. And it causes unnecessary pressure on council to conform.
This is the system we’ve chosen. If we chose it, then we can choose to reform it as well. There is a simple fix. Change the briefing note structure. Remove staff recommendations. Instead collaboratively work with staff to develop options and scenarios. It would then be up to council to choose between options. Then a motion from council would actually mean something.
Of course there are times when there may be only one good choice. When Commissioner Maynes asks City Council to fund a new million-dollar electric substation there’s not much room for debate. But again if City Council is not adding anything of value in the decision making process then we are an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and we should empower staff to make those decisions on their own.
Similarly there’s nothing wrong with delegating staff with making the decision on Covid stimulus spending or any other issue. But then don’t ask me to put my name on the decision.
Fostering healthy political debate
There is real loss with our current structure. Dissenting views are minimized or eliminated. It takes away the fun part of democracy—the debate of ideas. All council decisions are serious choices, but the fun lies in exploring the options, then acting. That’s what I love about politics. You have a complex problem, then at the end of the day you must act. You must pick one path. It’s better for everyone to see it as clearly as possible. That’s what healthy debate does. We’re so poisoned by what we see on TV we forget what good debate looks like. I’m embarrassed with what passes for political debate at the provincial and federal level. But our society can’t develop those skills without practice. This is a good opportunity to change that.
Under the current system of decision making City Council is a shell of what it could and should be. We are reduced to nit-picking whatever recommendation comes before us. If you watch council meetings you’ll notice most of the conversation is between council and our Chief Administrative Officer. In a healthy system, most of the debate should be between members of council.