St. Albert city councillors got their first look this week at a comprehensive list of services the city provides to residents, and may soon have a new policy to review them.
Administration presented a 100-page report Aug. 29 showing exactly what service levels the city will provide to residents in every single area in which the city provides services.
“Administration has put together the service levels we provide to the community all in one document, and the idea is to provide this to council for our input,” said Coun. Wes Brodhead. “Based on our input, we’ll get a final document back in November that we can pass judgment on.”
Councillors were unanimously supportive of the draft document, which they will provide feedback on by the end of this month, and which will come back to council Nov. 28 for final approval.
Darija Slokar, the city’s corporate business planning lead, explained to council that the purpose of putting all the information in one place is to make it easier to benchmark the service levels, compare them to other municipalities, and make adjustments where required – in the line the strategic framework council has approved.
It will also be used to help inform a new program and service review policy, which will replace the old continuous improvement review policy.
“This will provide a level of detail the policy’s lacking at this time, and will be included in the next policy,” she explained.
Interim city manager Chris Jardine explained this document does not include specific comparisons to other municipalities, as it can be difficult comparing the city’s services with other municipalities, based on the many different ways of describing those services. Nonetheless, he said the services inventory is the first step in being able to do some of more comprehensive comparison.
“This gives us a foundation so we’re able to go forward and do some proper analysis,” he said.
The services inventory will also inform amendments to council’s budget and taxation guiding principles policy.
Coun. Sheena Hughes expressed some concern over how that process would work, noting any change in service levels implies specific changes in taxes as well, but ultimately was supportive of the services inventory as a means of establishing what services to provide and the best way to provide them.
“I can see the value in that we can find gaps,” she said. “If you don’t know where you started you don’t know where you’re going.”
The list includes such diverse services as: what’s provided at the city’s customer-service counters, what kind of waste collection services the city provides, patching potholes, traffic safety and hundreds of others.
The service levels are spelled out very specifically. On the topic of bus-stop snow removal, for example, the document states snow will be cleared within 72 hours of a 5-cm snowfall. And on the topic of councillor responsiveness, the document states councillors will acknowledge the receipt of communication from residents within two business days.
The full draft document is available on the city website as part of the Aug. 29 agenda package.
