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Letter: Council has failed to act on reports of effectiveness of staff

'This failure has to rest exclusively on senior staff who evidently are incapable of, or not inclined, to change the status quo, and on previous council members who have failed to follow up on outstanding issues'
Don Rennick
2016 north bay logo on truck door turl

Editor's note: Mr, Rennick writes in response to the BayToday story Mayor: City review seeks 'the good, the bad, and the ugly'

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To the editor:

In July 2013 council accepted a report prepared by then CAO Knox which included a KPMG review of the City’s Fleet operations. The staff was directed to proceed with implementing the review’s recommendations. The report also recommended utilizing $50 to $100 thousand to hire a separate third party to assist with the formal assessment of vehicle and equipment requirements and develop a comprehensive Corporate Fleet Management Process.

The KPMG review detailed a step-by-step implementation plan and 14 recommendations which were to be completed prior to the 2014 budget finalization. The report was adopted as a priority and a grader purchase was cancelled to free up the necessary funds for the third-party consultant. Following that, in June 2015 after the 2015 budget finalization, there was still no evidence of a report being received by council.

This note appeared in the Fleet Management section of the 2016 budget. “In 2014, Mercury Associates Inc. conducted an in-depth fleet services program review. This review covered five broad areas – Utilization, Governance, Maintenance, Financial Management, and Rates and Fleet Replacement Practices. These tasks are underway and expected to be completed in 2016. The enclosed budget does not consider any accounting changes, efficiencies, or effectiveness changes that may result from the implementation of the 14 recommendations.”

Obviously, three years following the initial recognition of the problems and the approval to fix them nothing has been done. Meanwhile, fleet department labour costs have increased 40.1% during a period when inflation was 26.5%, so there’s that.

This narrative is an example of how ineffective the use of outside reports and other initiatives has been in changing the operational effectiveness of staff at City Hall over the past 10 years. This failure has to rest exclusively on senior staff who evidently are incapable of, or not inclined, to change the status quo, and on previous council members who have failed to follow up on outstanding issues.

The usual platitudes coming from those council members who have long since decided their only purpose on council is to continually praise staff’s performance, in spite of years of overwhelming real and anecdotal evidence to the contrary, is insulting.

The review is welcome and overdue, but let’s not pretend that the problems are not evident and may not exist. Without follow-up decisions being implemented by council and action taken, this will be just another expensive waste of time.

D. D. Rennick CPA, CA

North Bay