Wells’ motion to review organiztion of municipal hall defeated in tie vote
Councillors may be asking too much of municipal staff and will now undergo a governance review to examine how they conduct their business.
"I think the challenges of staff being overwhelmed fall at this side of the table," said Mayor Hugh O’Reilly at Monday’s council meeting.
"I think this (council) table has to be disciplined in what we try and do and ask our staff."
While Councillor Kristi Wells admits a governance review is a good thing, she said it doesn’t address some root issues at municipal hall in terms of staffing and structure.
She charged O’Reilly with glossing over the problem.
"I just don’t wear the rose coloured glass as often as you do," she said.
After the meeting Wells questioned why council would be asking more of staff and interfering with staff’s work.
"I figure the answer to that question is because, you know, we’re not quite satisfied with the job staff is doing," she said.
"If everything was coming forward really timely and perfect and all the rest of it, you’d just sit back and say ‘great.’
"But the point is... there’s some vacancies, staff is overworked... (it’s not that) they’re not capable, it’s just that things aren’t happening as fast as we’d like them to."
As such Wells tried to drum up support for a third-party organizational review of municipal operations at the meeting. It’s something she has been asking for in closed meetings throughout the past year.
Her motion, though supported by councillors Marianne Wade and Gordon McKeever, was defeated by a tied vote. Councillor Caroline Lamont was absent.
Local businessman John Nadeau who attended Monday’s meeting in part to see if there would be an organizational review, was hoping the motion would pass.
"I would have liked to have seen them slide it under the budget for 2004," he said.
Though he has no complaints about how staff conducts its business in his own experience, he sees the value in a review exercise.
"I think all organizations need to have people from the outside come in and have a look to validate what they’re doing," he said.
The organizational review would have looked at how the municipality as a whole conducts its business and would have identified and corrected any problems within the organization.
Wells said there is a general recognition that there is too much on the plates of senior staff members. It’s not that they can’t do their jobs but rather that they are being asked to do too much.
This workload is compounded by staff positions that have yet to be filled. In the last six months alone there have been a number of turnovers and vacancies within the organization. In addition Jim Godfrey’s contract as Administrator is up in six months.
The structural review is not about cleaning house said Wells but rather to address some of the personnel solutions that she sees as Band-Aid solutions and to do some succession planning, among other things.
Wells suggested there may be a better way to organize things and get them done more efficiently, particularly in light of the increased staff workload with the Comprehensive Sustainability Plan and the 2010 Olympics.
"Maybe there’s better ways to organize ourselves," she said.
Instead of asking for full-blown support of an organizational review on Monday night, she asked for a committee of three councillors and an outside party to draw up the Terms of Reference of that review and decide to proceed, or not, from those terms.
"I kind of knew it was going to be (a) lukewarm (response), which is why I did the motion to just simply do the Terms of Reference and the council could make a more comprehensive decision (based) on more details," she said.
"I was disappointed that that wasn’t even possible."
Instead, the governance review of council will now look at how the mayor and council relate to municipal staff and the roles and responsibilities that go with council’s job.
Wells was on council and involved in the last structural review, by Urban Systems, which took place in 1996. She saw the value in that review, which called for things like a senior management team and a position for a human resources officer. Those recommendations were implemented successfully after the review and are still in place today.
As a new Councillor Marianne Wade deferred to Wells’ experience and supported her motion, recognizing that best practices for any corporation involves always looking internally.
She also has concerns about the workload on senior levels of staff.
"I think we’ve seen the hints of stress on senior management," she said.
Councillor Gordon McKeever also agreed that a periodic review of internal functioning is a healthy exercise even if things are running well at municipal hall.
"If nothing else why don’t we confirm that?" he said.
But the support of two new councillors wasn’t enough to sway councillors Nick Davies and Ken Melamed or Mayor O’Reilly.
"I have difficulty with the concept of spending years building a team... and then saying to them, ‘but you know what, we don’t trust you to run the organization,’" said Davies.
"It seems to me if we’re going to undertake any kind of an exercise like this, there has to be a reason for doing it.
"The only reason I’ve heard... is that seven years have passed (since the last review.)"
Likewise Melamed doesn’t see any major flaws in the municipal organization that would warrant a review from an outside party at this time.
"What I see is a history of successes," he said.
He sees the staff at municipal hall as a highly functioning team that may not be perfect but they have his vote of confidence.
"I think there may be a better time for us to look at this," he said, adding the focus should be on the CSP.
The mayor was also not convinced.
He said the last review in 1996 was done because the municipality was in dire straits at that time.
Several key figures had left at once, leaving gaping holes in the administration. That is simply not the case now.
"The municipality has matured significantly in seven years," he said after the meeting.
O’Reilly said Wells has some support on council but perhaps the timing for the structural review is off. There was a suggestion that a review could take place after the CSP process is complete. He added that he is supporting the structure that’s currently in place and focusing on the governance review first.
"No one’s trying to do anything less than the very best," he said.
