In the seven years we spent in St. Albert – great years incidentally – the question of “full-time city council” came up at least twice.
I will explain why this cannot be justified in any shape or form.
Red Deer – population 90,000; Lethbridge – population 88,000; and Grande Prairie – population 34,000 plus; all have part time city councillors.
Red Deer, in particular, has a distinctly large industrial-commercial region throughout.
Wood Buffalo/Fort McMurray is North America’s second largest municipality with a city population of approx 85,000 and a regional population of between 40,000 and 60,000.
In my 39 years there, I was on many municipal committees in Fort McMurray and also campaign manager for Alberta’s second-longest serving councillor for 32 years – nine terms – who sadly has now passed on.
Wood Buffalo/Fort McMurray has a budget of around $1 billion. But it has had a part time city council for close to 45 years.
So in Alberta only Edmonton and Calgary have full time city councillors, which makes sense.
It must be said that city councillors work hard for the citizens of St. Albert. They sacrifice family and leisure time to be at city hall. Nobody does it for fame and in most cases for little appreciation by their electorate. In my seven years in St. Albert – we moved for family reasons, not out of choice – I saw great improvements such as active business development, tax control, and very difficult private development – all contentious issues.
That aside, if city council feel that the hours of work are onerous then I suggest that they do what Fort McMurray did in 1999. We brought in a business management duo from University of Alberta whose objective was to study the efficiency of city council – not city management. What they found was that city council as a team did great work considering the rapidly expanding aspects of the oilsands region (I never call it “boom” as nobody can ever define it ... it’s a media term). Here are approximate results paraphrased from this private report:
Sixty per cent to 65 per cent of all council work was “functionally efficient in large part.”
Fifteen per cent reflected “ill-prepared work on agendas by councillors who wasted valuable time not doing prior research ahead of the meeting” and required a recap of previously agreed material.
Twenty per cent was work that was “Minutiae and could be delegated to sub committees” to discuss and report to council, thereby not tying up valuable time.
In total more than 35 per cent of council work was relatively non-productive and could be handled differently.
Since then, Wood Buffalo Council has referred minor matters to a sub committee of either council or citizen appointees and it has worked well. Preparation time ahead of council meetings is also handled better by social media or other means. When councils are full time it costs significantly more in wages and benefits and in addition when councillors are not re-elected by the citizens, demands are made for severance pay or benefit continuation putting a financial load on city human resources administration. If Wood Buffalo can continue business more efficiently, then, with greatest respect, I use the tired clichĂ© for St. Albert Council to “work smarter, not harder” like others in Alberta. And in today’s economic times, less is better. And adding 28 new positions (2015 budget) at a time of substantial layoffs cannot be justified in any way unless they are 100 per cent safety or loss prevention related, which is doubtful.
Thank you for this opportunity,
Bert MacKay, Edmonton
