Lack of information not helping anyone

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2023 (1195 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It appears that Brandon City Hall has some trust issues.

The Sun reported this past week that city council had declined a proposal from the city administration to withdraw a request for a public hearing on proposed water rate increases.

City administration had argued that withdrawing its request for a public hearing on the situation could speed up the timeline for the Public Utilities Board to make a decision.

Not only was this assertion apparently false, according to PUB executive director Darren Christle, it prompted a largely unnecessary debate around the council table.

The city approved a request to the PUB last summer to raise rates on July 1 each year from 2023 to 2026 to help make up for past deficits and pay for current and future infrastructure projects. These increases would see water and wastewater rates nearly double by the end of that period, but the city has been forced to put those plans on hold with the PUB’s approval yet to be granted.

At Monday’s council meeting, the city’s administration told councillors that the city withdrawing the request would leave the ultimate decision of whether to have a public hearing up to the PUB. That means the utilities board could have still requested a hearing, but the city’s director of utilities, Alexia Stangherlin, said it would likely have meant a speedier decision.

Thankfully, council ultimately reaffirmed its desire to hold a public hearing as a means to fulfil its obligations to transparency and public input. This was the correct decision, in our view, as our city should do everything in its power to reach out to local citizens.

Nevertheless, their decision was based on faulty information.

Christle told the Sun on Wednesday that withdrawing the request would not have sped up the board’s decision-making process. Christle also told the Sun that the city’s application had not gone into the PUB’s queue for water decision until Jan. 26 of this year because of miscalculations and errors that had to be corrected.

That’s not the answer given to Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) when he asked during the council meeting why it had taken so long for the PUB to return with an answer, stating that council had been led to expect one last November.

“I don’t understand why this took so long for the PUB to get back to us and then basically didn’t even have an ad out until April, which I guarantee you many people didn’t see,” Berry said.

Stangherlin responded by stating that the city did not know how the PUB’s internal processes work, with city manager Ron Bowles adding that the city was still waiting to get an idea of when the board would return a response.

Clearly it’s not that hard to find out. We obtained the information with a simple phone call.

It’s entirely possible that a lengthy back-and-forth exchange between the PUB and municipalities submitting rate applications to correct errors is a normal part of the process.

However, when this paper reached out to administration to ask why no mention had been made about the delays at Monday’s meeting and why a request to council had been made on a seemingly faulty premise, the response sent in by city manager Ron Bowles shed no light on the situation.

Without any substantive response, we’re left with no choice but to speculate, and the possible answers don’t seem very flattering to administration’s handling of the situation. Not only did the city administration look like it was covering its rear end by failing to volunteer the fact that mistakes were made in the application — thus the delay — someone thought that attempting to convince council to limit public input on a matter of public interest was a good idea.

In recent years, city proposals to increase water rates have not been without controversy as citizens and local businesses have not proven very receptive to increases in business and living costs. In 2016, a plan to increase water rates by 44 per cent over five years and combined with the removal of tier discounts met significant pushback from commercial and industrial users in the city.

As such, the city scrapped its original proposal and submitted a revised set of rates to the PUB to set rates for three years, and kept the tiered rate system to soften the blow for high-volume users.

Public response clearly prompted changes to the city’s rate hike proposal then.

We understand only a single resident has thus far reached out to complain about the proposed rate increase when feedback had been solicited by the PUB in March and April of this year. But there has been much evidence over the past several months that the city’s public outreach needs significant improvement. Given the increased costs, the lack of response to the PUB is more likely due to lack of public information and knowledge than mere disinterest.

The question then becomes, how reliant should our city councillors be on those who work in the city’s bureaucracy? Do councillors need to exercise more oversight when it comes to the information they’re receiving? We would suggest that yes, it has become clear that more oversight is necessary.

Much like the Park Community Centre saga, we once again find ourselves in a situation where decisions are being made behind the scenes that don’t seem to involve our elected officials — in this case, to withhold information on a significant matter before council.

When reached by the Sun, Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) said the lack of accurate information from administration only serves to create distrust between councillors and administration. And by extension, we’d argue it harms the public’s trust in city hall.