Three Letters to the Editor
Ron Bolin: June 7, 2013
I couldn’t control myself after reading the agenda for Monday’s Council meeting and have given up after only three letters as I am exhausted. Read them and weep. We are watching our dignity leave the field.
If you find any or all of these topics to be of interest do not hesitate to comment here on the blog, or better yet, get your comments to Council before Monday’s meeting. I believe we have provided all of them with computers or pads, so they should be available right up to –or even during- the meeting.
Letter the First (Colliery Dams):
Letter to the Editor:
The Council agenda for Monday, June 10, contains a report regarding the Colliery Dams Removal Tender which appears imminent. That report notes that:
“At is (sic) meeting of 2013-May-13, Council directed staff to:
proceed with immediate removal of the lower and middle Chase River Dams and take
the necessary steps to build replacements for both dams and equip the lower dam to
ensure it can be used for hydro generation.”
A tender and drawings for removal have been prepared and are ready to be issued; award
would be contingent upon receiving approval from Dam Safety Section and Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. The value of this contract is estimated to be $3.0 million. Funding for
this phase of the project will come from reserves, including the $2.5 million added to the
General Capital Reserve from the 2012 surplus.
The work consists of:
• dewatering the reservoirs,
• diverting the Chase River around the reservoirs,
• deconstructing the dams,
• creating a temporary (winter-time) flow channel through the bottom of the reservoirs,
• controlling erosion and sediment release to stabilize the area for winter time flows and mitigate the risk to downstream fisheries, residents, and infrastructure.
While the removal project proceeds, design and approvals can proceed on the dam replacement structures, with construction targeted for 2014.”
Careful reading of these passages clearly identifies a disjuncture between the motion which was passed by Council and the “work” to be contracted as there are no identifiable simultaneous steps to be taken to rebuild. This is reminiscent of the conference centre referendum question which promised that, if authority to borrow $30 million dollars were approved, citizens would get a centre and a hotel for $52.5 million. The only part of the promise that was kept was the borrowing of the $30 million. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Letter the Second (Upper Lantzville Water):
Letter to the Editor
At its meeting of Monday, June 10, Council will consider a Staff recommendation:
“That Council authorize Staff to finalize a water supply agreement with the District of Lantzville based on the terms outlined in the Staff report.”
The purpose of this recommendation is given as
“To obtain Council approval for the supply of water to Lantzville.”
The brief and politically unenlightening report on this matter cites a 2005 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU):
“Under this MOU the City of Nanaimo agreed in principle to the District of Lantzville’s request for
the City to extend its water supply system, at some future point in time, to include Lantzville.
In the time since this MOU was signed, the parties have worked extensively to define
acceptable terms under which water could be provided to the citizens of Lantzville.”
Now I don’t know about you, fellow citizens, but I haven’t heard City Hall working extensively to discuss this matter with the citizens of Nanaimo. The implications of this deal are many and serious. Principal among them is the simple basic question of the conditions under which any municipality should be providing services outside its own jurisdiction. In doing so are we operating as a charity? Or maybe we are in a business venture which will make enough money to pay down the tens of millions which Nanaimo taxpayers have and continue to put out on our water supply and the annual 7.5% increases in water rates which we continue to endure? Or are we fishing for an amalgamation, given that water is probably the most important service which a municipality provides?
It strikes me as particularly un-reassuringly to learn that this deal is, at least for the time being, limited to service to Upper Lantzville where a huge development recently went bankrupt for lack of water.
Council owes its citizens a much broader discussion of this issue.
Letter the Third: (Corporate Officer)
Letter to the Editor:
The Community Charter, section 148, identifies the position of Corporate Officer:
“One of the municipal officer positions must be assigned the responsibility of corporate administration, which includes the following powers, duties and functions:
(a) ensuring that accurate minutes of the meetings of the council and council committees are prepared and that the minutes, bylaws and other records of the business of the council and council committees are maintained and kept safe;
(b) ensuring that access is provided to records of the council and council committees, as required by law or authorized by the council;
(c) administering oaths and taking affirmations, affidavits and declarations required to be taken under this Act or any other Act relating to municipalities;
(d) certifying copies of bylaws and other documents, as required or requested;
(e) accepting, on behalf of the council or municipality, notices and documents that are required or permitted to be given to, served on, filed with or otherwise provided to the council or municipality;
(f) keeping the corporate seal, if any, and having it affixed to documents as required.”
In the minutes of the Committee of the Whole meeting of Nov. 26, 2012 it was noted that:
- It was moved and seconded that Council: “appoint Tracy Samra as Corporate Officer for the City of Nanaimo, effective 2012-NOV-29.”
Ms. Samra is a practicing member of the Law Society of British Columbia and is thus eminently qualified to fill the position of Corporate Officer known administratively as the Manager of Legislative Services.
At the upcoming Council meeting on June 10, 2013, under the Division of the agenda which is apparently now known as ADMINISTRATION and previously known as CORPORATE SERVICES, Staff recommended: “That Council appoint Mr. Ian Howat, Director of Strategic Relationships, as a Deputy Corporate Officer, to fulfill the duties set out in Section 148 of the Community Charter, in the absence of the Corporate Officer.
The Corporate Officer was last noted as being in attendance at any Council meetings on March 18. Where is our Corporate Officer and why do we suddenly require a Deputy Corporate Officer “in the absence of the Corporate Officer”?
End
Posts and Comments on Nanaimo Governance 
Have to agree with you Ron; think a lot of us are exhausted. You do a lot of communicating with Council and I am sure don’t always get replies; folk do appreciate your commitment to making Nanaimo a better place.
I sent this in as a Letter to the Editor yesterday which I am sure if printed council will see.
——————-
The editorial, ‘Once out, dams will be difficult to rebuild’ explains quite clearly both on a subjective and objective level the fears of those opposed to Council’s Plans. With council’s propensity for closed door decisions it is actually amazing that notice of the application for injunction was given; quite out of the ordinary.
As council’s decision to remove the dams in the first place was under the guise of safety I fear that their latest decision could actually have the opposite effect; increasing risk. With no indication that there would be anything other than peaceful protest of the removal of the dam’s council may, inadvertently by their decisions, ultimately be the cause of something not so peaceful.
I sincerely hope this is not the case but as the old saying goes ‘desperate times require desperate measures’. As has been seen across Canada and throughout the world there are those that have taken this quite literally; let’s hope such does not happen in Nanaimo.
Sweet water indeed. 50 new connections per year x 20 years = 1000 new homes with an average appraisal of say $400,000 (2013 dollars) = $400 million, and not one cent collected in property taxes to support the upstream infrastructure costs that are borne by Nanaimo taxpayers
Letter the Fourth: Who is Responsible for the Cities Budget?
At its June 10 meeting, Staff, in the face of a similar request from Councillor Kipp, will bring forward a proposal: “To get Council’s direction on the preparation and review of the 2014- 2018 Financial Plan.”
The Staff report notes that:
“The financial plan is a large and extremely complex document. There is only a handful of Staff who fully understands the document in its entirety, and digesting all of the details can be very daunting for someone who doesn’t work with it virtually full-time. It is unrealistic to expect that Council members will be 100% conversant with all aspects the budget. However, Council does need to be confident that the financial plan reflects the vision that Council has for the community.”
Amen to that! There is a further need to ensure that citizens are confident that the financial plan reflects their vision –and their ability to pay. While part of the reason why both citizens and Council are less than 100% conversant with the budget arises from the complex manner in which it is presented, a significant part of the process is ignored: understanding basic priorities.
Each of us must define certain facts and estimates about our household operations: What income do expect and how much of it is certain; what savings do we have which can be called upon if need be; how much do we owe and how much more might we able to borrow if necessary, and last but not least, what are our known and anticipated expenses.
It is in the matter of expenses that this process is most daunting: Income is income, savings are savings and debt is debt. But expenses, though more under our immediate control, are more insidious in the day in, day out, year in, year out stress which they place on our emotions. A budget is designed to set some limits on our emotions. Before a rational budgeting process can begin, it is required that we differentiate our expenditures into what is necessary and can only be cut if we are prepared to contemplate bankruptcy, and what non necessities ( niceties, if you will) can be cut without threatening our vitality or added without unbalancing our economy.
While there may be differences about what is a necessity and what is desired, without defining these terms, there is no basis for any rational budget discussion. What is clear however, is that things which once were discretionary have a way of becoming necessary and that what is desired has a similar habit of taking on the guise of a necessity. These reasons demand periodic reviews.
In its report Staff outlines three budget options for Council:
1. Direct service level cuts or increases;
2. The status quo; or
3. The budget target with a “cutback list.
These approaches neither command Council’s responsibility in determining the hierarchy of needs in our community ranging from mandatory to frivolous nor how, proportionally, our scarce resources are to be allocated along this spectrum. Neither does it demand management ability from Staff in then operationalizing those policy statements. To my way of thinking both areas of responsibility nave been misallocated: Council’s as it becomes embroiled in operational details, and Staff’s by laying off implementation plans on Council.
There have been several attempts to implement a “Core Review” or a “Zero Based Budget Process” which raise questions, not only about the money, but about its meaning and use. Councillors who have continually asked for a “Core Review” are correct about where a budget process can begin. The question is, at base, should Council “Set” a budget which is then to be implemented by Staff, or are they there to “Review” a budget set by Staff. While recognizing that a fine line is involved, in my opinion these two methodologies must periodically be interchanged and it is time for Council take the lead in the budget dance.
To their credit, in recent years Staff has introduced tools which, if properly developed and maintained, can be used to make the financial plan easier to understand, if not easier to fund, for both Council and citizens. Among these is the Balanced Score Card which attempts to set standards and measures for performance in city activities which can then be balanced with expenditures in those areas thus allowing a comparison of expenses to results. See:
http://www.nanaimo.ca/PerformanceMeasurement/BalancedScorecard
Beyond this document is the City’s late to the table but better late than never Asset Management Plan. Asset management has become the financial equivalent of sonar in sounding out the perils which lie below the surface of our budgetary and financial plans. It looks at the costs of maintaining our already municipally owned assets such as water and sewer lines, roads, buildings, parks, vehicles, computers, etc. These costs, once aggregated, can be daunting. The City currently owns and operates assets of over $2.2 billion (with a “b”) dollars. Like all assets, including those of our own homes, these need periodic maintenance or, in the end, replacement –fortunately not all at the same time. The first of the following documents lays out the bones of the problem as it relates to Nanaimo while the second, update document, puts some dollar cost flesh on those bones.
Click to access Asset_Management_Plan.pdf
Click to access 2012AssetManagementUpdate.pdf
It has not been apparent to me that these documents were extensively used in the development of, or discussions about, the 2013 budget and the 2013-2017 Financial Plan, further than to add a 1% per year property tax increase for Asset Management in each of the next five years.
It is to be hoped that these measures will be more fully developed and maintained during the 2014 process which hopefully will be undertaken along with a core review or zero base budget process and can be completed, unlike the 2013 budget, before the next year’s spending begins.
It is fervently to be hoped that Council and Staff can reach a budget and financial plan process that will recognize that a budget is more than just a set of numbers which add up, but also a set of numbers that represent the needs as well as the desires of a community in a measured and unambiguous way.
I couldn’t control myself after reading the agenda for Monday’s Council ..
Ron ; there is always Depends !! when you pee youself laughing at City antics..
I’m glad I am not alone when I smell rat with the water agreement with Lantzville.
It seems a millisecond ago that Council & staff were salvinating at yet another make work(for whom) project in the form a a multi million $$$$ dam because we are (be very very scared) running out of water!
Just how long can this ‘create wealth’ bullshit go on, when it is at the taxpayers expence?
To add insult to injury; the beneficiaries of this grandiose scheme (upper Lantzville) would seem to be the the same group that financed Cable Bay (also needing water) and also financed certain Councillors in their election financing.
It should also be noted that for many years some members of Council & staff have had their eyes on a ‘Greater Nanaimo’ that also includes Cedar
.