St. Albert’s chief administrative officer said city service levels may soon suffer if resources become stretched too thin.
CAO Bill Fletcher said current operations and projects, along with the demands of future projects as the city grows, present a substantial risk to administration’s capacity to maintain the council-determined levels.
“That, fundamentally, is a concern going forward,” Fletcher said in an interview. “I would say that we're not at risk of spontaneously combusting — the city isn't going to break — but the danger is that across the board, through all those contributing factors, if we aren't deliberate in terms of addressing those factors as we grow, at some point in time the service levels will suffer.”
“Service levels govern everything we do and are driven by council, so that is no-fail; (those are) absolutely marching orders and take a large part of our day-to-day capacity.”
Fletcher said city administration's current capacity limitations should not be thought of only as a staffing problem. He said if, for example, a more efficient I.T. system were installed to “streamline our communications,” staff would have more time to dedicate to other work.
“I would say it's not staff capacity, but it is corporate capacity,” Fletcher. However, he agreed staff capacity cannot be separated from a definition of corporate capacity, given staff are behind all city operations.
“It's, yes, people, and yes it's money, but it's also infrastructure, and it's scope and scale of workload,” he said.
“A big part of it too, honestly, is prioritization,” he said. “There are a million and one things that are important to be done, but we can do a million and one things probably relatively poorly.”
“We try to prioritize based on council's direction. They were elected, and they set their priorities strategically ... but I think we've got a lot of things on the go, and we need to really focus on priorities.”
Looking ahead, Fletcher said city staff are working on a long-term corporate strategy as a guide for administration to use in conjunction with council's strategic plan, as well as a corporate business plan.
In the short term, Fletcher said it's possible the draft 2024 budget scheduled to be presented to council in October will include some business cases to address capacity issues immediately, such as hiring additional staff.
The city currently has 688.4 full time equivalent (FTE) permanent staff positions.
No easy solution
Coun. Ken MacKay, who, along with Mayor Cathy Heron, Coun. Sheena Hughes, and two residents, who serve on the internal audit and steering committee, said the committee is working on a corporate risk registry to address the capacity issue.
“I would be much more concerned if I believed that work wasn't underway or that individuals within the organization were oblivious to it,” MacKay said. “We have the people and processes in place that mitigate any of that potential impact or damage.”
MacKay said he doesn't think there is an easy solution, as staffing levels, workload, and infrastructure all play roles in corporate capacity.
"It's not just one factor impacting our capacity, it's many, and council certainly has to be aware of it, but really it's an administration task and function,” he said, meaning administration will need to find and present solutions to council.
“It's up to the CAO to take our priorities and then (how those are implemented) maybe that requires additional staffing, or resourcing, or moving resources, shuffling reporting areas, or changing the (organizational hierarchy) chart, or looking at prioritization.”
Likewise, Coun. Shelley Biermanski says would like to see the city's CAO find corporate efficiencies and improved capacity, both of which were promised when council approved codifying two additional executive administration positions to work under Fletcher during last year's budget deliberations.
“Our executive team has expanded under the new CAO in the last year with finding efficiencies and greater organizational capacity (as) the goal,” Biermanski said. “I hope to see effective planning at our current capacity as the ideal, but (I'm) waiting to see the CAO's future plan of attack because that was what was promoted.”
“I think that as a team they're trying and what we'd like to see is the efficiencies and focusing on the right projects at the right time.”
Heron was unavailable for comment.
