THUNDER BAY – The city will be bringing in an outside set of eyes to audit its operations, programs and services, an exercise that veteran councillors haven’t seen conducted in their nearly two decades at city hall.
A detailed program review, to be conducted by an external consultant, was approved by Thunder Bay city council on Monday night to examine the more than 140 program and service areas of the city.
Coun. Trevor Giertuga, who has served continuously since first being elected in 2000, said he had tried unsuccessfully on multiple occasions over the years to launch this type of initiative.
“It’s been over 20 years since we’ve had a review of this type,” Giertuga said. “Show me an organization that’s over 20 years and hasn’t taken a look at what they do and how they do it. I think it should have been a long time ago and I think it’s incumbent upon us to make sure we look at it and see if we’re doing things properly. If we are, good enough but I’m sure we’re going to find some efficiencies.”
The consultant, who will be hired through a request for proposal process, will be tasked with delivering preliminary recommendations on any service level changes to council prior to next year’s budget deliberations, with a full report due ahead of their 2021 budget process.
City manager Norm Gale said council will have a series of checkpoints along the way where they can provide input and approve how the consultant is conducting the process, specifically when it comes to its work plan, public engagement approach, preliminary report and the final report..
“This is a holistic approach that does the entire organization,” Gale said, adding that the only exclusions about be emergency services which are currently going through the process to launch their own strategic reviews.
“It’s the consultant that will also bring us a plan of how to do that and council will look at that plan and weigh in on what that plan is. That is, I think, the first checkpoint for council.”
The terms of reference for the review set out an approach that includes gathering information to review each program or service, collecting benchmarking data for Thunder Bay compared to other comparable cities and interviewing and engaging with a list of stakeholders that includes council, unions, employees and the public.
The consultant will also review the organizational structure of the city and identifying any potential changes, modifications or eliminations.
The final report will include recommendations for service improvements and changes and the associated financial implications, prioritization and a model for tracking implementation.
Coun. Mark Bentz, council’s budget chair, put the onus on council to have the exercise ultimately be productive.
“I think they’re successful in defining organizations and potential paths forward. Where they fail is when council doesn’t follow through with recommendations that there’s not agreement,” Bentz said.
“I think it will be a successful project in providing us insight and information into the organization. If we fail it, then it won’t be successful. That doesn’t mean cutting to the bone. I don’t want anyone out there to think that’s the sole purpose of this. It’s an act of due diligence and looking for efficiencies and doing things better.”
Though it was approved unanimously, Coun. Andrew Foulds did express some trepidation but believed there could be some value to the information uncovered becoming more publicly known.
Foulds made it clear he didn’t want the final report to be a roadmap for program and service level slashing.
“I continue to be very skeptical of this type of process. I’m reluctant to support it largely because historically these haven’t yielded much success,” Foulds said.
“However, throughout this process there is language in here around education of the public, which I think is important. We haven’t gone through that exercise since I’ve been on council where constituents, citizens fully understood the cost of paving a kilometre of road, or what it costs to run a seniors’ facility or what it costs to run the (Canada Games) Complex or the (Thunder Bay Community) Auditorium.”
