By Alison Taylor
It won’t be business as usual at municipal hall anymore.
Administrator Bill Barratt has thrown out the staid, traditional model of local government and introduced a revolutionary restructuring of the organization.
The old departments of planning and engineering are now a thing of the past, renamed and refocused to jive with Whistler’s sustainability plan, Whistler 2020.
Like the plan itself, the realignment is breaking new ground
and steering a course for the community in the journey to sustainability.
Mayor Ken Melamed, who along with the rest of council got their first glimpse of the reorganization at the beginning of November in a closed meeting, called it groundbreaking.
“Frankly I’m very impressed with the administrator’s desire to see this realignment structurally in-line with Whistler 2020 because it shows his commitment and gives us a tremendous amount of credibility as an organization about our commitment to the words that are in the plan,” said the mayor.
Barratt presented his plans to more than 150 staff last Thursday at the Delta Village Suites.
He calls the realignment a “cultural shift” at municipal hall.
“I think the key thing is it’s consistent with our current strategy, which is Whistler2020, so it just puts all the focus on the delivery (of that sustainability plan),” said Barratt, who has been quietly working on this project for the past several months with the help of an outside consultant.
The total cost for the staff revamp is $60,000, which will be covered from existing budgets.
Like most municipalities, Whistler’s municipal hall was organized along traditional lines — a department of finance, a department of planning, the engineering and public works department and the department of parks and recreation.
Now, using four of the five key priorities of the Whistler2020 plan — enriching community life, enhancing the resort experience, protecting the environment and ensuring economic viability — Barratt has shifted the focus of the various municipal departments and they have been renamed accordingly. The fifth priority — partnering for success — will overlay all departments at the hall.
Councillor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden called the realignment significant.
“We are doing something really quite radically different by
organizing the hall along the five values of Whistler2020,” she said last week.
“It will have the effect of driving down the plan into the hall but also having the staff at the hall keep Whistler2020 uppermost in their minds.”
The engineering and public works department is now called “Environment”, responsible for water/waste, transit, developmental services such as energy systems and environmental programs. Brian Barnett will continue to oversee these services in the department. The only change is the addition of the community forest, bear management and the Protected Areas Network.
The parks and recreation department is now called “Resort Experience,” while the planning department is called “Community Life.”
One of the biggest changes in this area is a division of development planning.
Resort Experience, under Keith Bennett, will focus on resort development planning and will process development applications such as those from Holborn and Cressey. Resort Experience will also handle parks planning, village and park maintenance, and village animation.
Community Life, under Bob MacPherson, will process community developments such as resident housing projects like Rainbow. The department will also oversee bylaw enforcement, building services and RCMP, among other things.
Shifting some of the responsibilities of the busy planning department should spread out the workload, said Barratt.
Mayor Melamed added that it should make the hall more efficient.
“It really gets away from the old more classic silo-ing of jurisdictions,” he said. “Now you’ve got planners in multiple departments so I think one thing it’s going to do is aid through the cross-pollination of services and talents in the municipality and I think that will contribute to making us a more effective group. At the end of the day that’s what we’re here to do is be effective in our delivery of services.”
The last new department is “Economic Enhancement” which will oversee all financial services, legislative services, budget and investments. The general manager of corporate services, John Nelson, has been moved. A former engineer, Nelson will now oversee the multi-million dollar upgrades to the wastewater treatment facility.
Filling that critical role solves one pressing problem of finding a project manager for the wastewater treatment plant upgrades in a competitive market but it also leaves an opening for a senior manager at the hall in charge of economic enhancement. Barratt is looking for someone to fill that role.
An organizational review of the hall was on council’s work plan for the second half of this term but will now, most likely, prove unnecessary.
This realignment, explained Councillor Bob Lorriman, while not really a traditional organizational review, could serve the same purposes — streamlining the organization, making it more efficient.
“I don’t see a burning need right now to do the traditional organizational review until we see how this moves forward,” said Lorriman. “We may very well see that this is working great and has accomplished a lot of what we wanted.
“It’s certainly happening faster than I thought it was going to. I think that’s another positive.”
Barratt said the timing was just right to make the transition. Whistler2020 was launched last year with the input and direction of hundreds of community members. It is now an integral part of the municipal budgeting system.
Making the organizational change now will entrench the new system in time for the 2010 Games.
Barratt is scheduled to make a formal presentation of the realignment to council on Monday night.
