City hall is a funny place. Not so much funny ‘ha-ha’, but more funny ‘interesting.’
Take for example, last week’s shakeup of city administration. The firing of city manager Bill Holtby and the subsequent restructuring aimed at increasing the emphasis on economic development was an excellent illustration of the interesting tug of war that exists between the city’s councillors and senior administrators.
This tug of war is unknown to many residents, including some who throw in their names for election. At election time it’s easy to distinguish the newcomers from the incumbents. New challengers are full of bold statements about what they will do once elected while incumbents shake their heads as if to say: “Just wait until you see what it’s really like.”
After the election the learning curve kicks in. Those who have been successful trudge off to councillor training. Ironically, as Count. Cam MacKay pointed out last year, this orientation was led by then city manager Bill Holtby.
That session is where the reality of being a councillor is drilled into the heads of those elected. The ins and outs of the Municipal Government Act are explained.
Like patients emerging from a lobotomy, councillors return from the session subdued and obedient. Their spirits dulled by the procedure, they’re now singing from the same song sheet and there’s only one song, that catchy old classic: My Role Is To Set City Policy Not To Get Involved In The Day To Day Management of City Operations.
It’s an odd system when you step back and look at it. We have a group of laypeople directing a group of well-paid professionals.
Those pros have educational designations a mile long and usually years of seasoning in their respective fields. Meanwhile, those in charge must only convince a segment of their fellow citizens that they deserve a seat at the table.
Put more simply, the people who know less about how the city works are in charge of those who know more. When these laypeople want to learn in greater detail how the system works so they can provide better direction to those running the place, they have to ask this very same group of professionals for the required information.
Depending on a councillor’s style, some are able to move freely around city hall, gathering the information they need to form their opinions (while being careful not to overstep their bounds and start barking orders.)
Others will tell you they feel purposely left in the dark and are relegated to performing computer research in their own basements, just like the average resident.
The system breeds frustration on both sides. Councillors get frustrated that they can’t just snap their fingers and make things happen, as their fellow residents expect of them. Administrators get frustrated that they must continuously explain and research things, sometimes on a whim, when they’d rather just get on with what they do.
It’s interesting to see how councillors differ in how they treat and view administration. Some have their default settings set to believing what administration tells them, while others view the explanations of administrators as if it was the tweeting of birds.
At any rate, this is democracy. We demand to have elected representatives we can hold to account on election day. We want to have a group of ‘us’ there so the self-serving eggheads don’t have free reign. As Mayor Nolan Crouse has said, people expect that the mayor is in charge, so he’s down at city hall pushing buttons and yanking levers even when he’s not really supposed to be.
Even after council’s mighty administration shakeup last week, the inevitable tug of war will eventually resume. Council will hire a new city manager to head up the administration team that has been forced to make some substitutions before beginning the struggle anew.
