Improve information flow at city hall

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/02/2025 (308 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Earlier this week, this newspaper published an editorial (“We need a better budget process,” Jan. 28) that discussed last weekend’s budget deliberations by Brandon City Council. The editorial referred to various important pieces of information that appeared to have been disclosed far too late in the deliberation process.

It asked why a number of items that allowed for the proposed tax increase to be lowered were only disclosed during the deliberations, and not weeks earlier. It wondered if two full days of high-pressure budget deliberations, just days before the budget deadline, is the best way for our mayor and councillors to arrive at an annual budget for a city the size of Brandon.

It argued that important information was discovered and/or disclosed far too late in the budgeting process, preventing councillors from giving it careful consideration prior to the deliberations beginning, and effectively denying the public any opportunity to provide meaningful input on the budget.

It suggested that Brandon needs a better, more transparent and effective budget process, and that our city council should get to work on that new process, so that it can be in place for next year’s deliberations.

All of that makes sense, but any solution must start with ensuring that all relevant information is disclosed to council and the public as early as possible. For example, it’s hard to believe that our mayor, council and city administrative staff were all unaware, until sometime last Friday, as to how large the 2024 surplus really was. If that information had been disclosed even two weeks earlier, it would have impacted the budget discussions.

The same goes for the too-late revelation that the projected operations budget for the new Maple Leaf Soccer Complex was $250,000 too high for the year. Did nobody really notice that until after budget deliberations had commenced?

Disclosure of those two items would have made it immediately obvious that an 11.7 per cent tax increase, as was proposed in the draft budget prepared by administration, was never a serious likelihood. A lot of anxiety could have been avoided, and we — city council and the public, who each have a role in the budget process — could have focused on other important budget issues.

In the past, I have written about the habit of city administrators to prepare draft budgets that propose a massive property tax increase, only to see their city council arrive at a budget that calls for a much smaller increase. I have suggested that it is a manipulative trick that is designed to make councillors look like tax-fighting heroes, even if the tax hike they ultimately approve is still hard on taxpayers.

The public is relieved the increase isn’t as high as was proposed, but that increase was never a serious possibility. We keep failing to realize, year after year, that we are being duped into falling for the “don’t complain, it could be worse” argument.

Earlier this week, I had a chat with a number of city leaders regarding the problem of administrative staff withholding important information from city councillors, or delaying its disclosure for far too long. We also discussed the reality that our councillors rely upon our mayor and city administration to provide the information they need in order to do their jobs, but that there have been too many occasions when the first time they learned about an issue at city hall was by reading The Brandon Sun.

That shouldn’t happen. In order for our councillors to provide effective oversight of the city’s operations, as is their duty under the Municipal Act, they need to be aware of all relevant information as soon as it is available. The same goes for the city’s budget process. They need to see all of the city’s financial information as it comes into existence, not midway through budget deliberations.

A number of people have suggested that the solution to this problem — not enough information getting to city councillors soon enough — is to reduce the number of city councillors and make them full-time. They suggest that each councillor could be put in charge of one area of the city’s activities (for example, finance, public works or recreation), so that council has year-round eyes and ears on every aspect of the city’s operations.

On its face, the idea makes a lot of sense. Having full-time city councillors immersed in the city’s everyday activities would give them a clearer picture of what city staff is doing, and could better serve the interests of Brandonites. The problem, however, is that moving to full-time councillors could create administrative mayhem within city hall, and would likely require a permanent tax increase in order to pay all the extra costs. Beyond that, the approach may be overkill.

The problem here relates to the timely flow of information to city councillors and the public, in a manner that enables each of them to be full participants in our local democracy. We should begin to address that problem by ensuring that the mayor and senior administrative staff make a greater commitment and effort to disclose information relevant to the city’s operations as soon as it becomes available.

If they can accomplish that goal, perhaps we can avoid the Pandora’s box that would come with full-time councillors.