Ensuring value for taxpayer money.
That’s the main idea behind a councillor motion directing the city’s CAO to prepare a request for proposal for a third party operational review.
Councillor Jamie Lowery’s motion says the review will look at the organizational structure, personnel and resources required in the delivery of services and projects in all departments and benchmark key performance indicators (KPI) against other like organizations.
Lowery says his hope is that some form of metrics will be developed that they can “build on with continuous improvement.”
“Nothing is going to be perfect, even after this,” he says. “Technology changes, practice changes, legislation changes but certainly there’s an opportunity for us to have those systems in place to be nimble enough to make the changes and look for improvement.”
Mayor Peter Chirico says measurement is the key to any organization’s success.
“You cannot manage what you’re not measuring,” he says. “This will set, and specifically some of the requests that we’re asking for to do this will set those KPIs, will set those benchmarks of where we are today because I don’t think that we actually know what we’re doing very well. There are lots of things in this organization that we are doing very well, but we’re not measuring it.”
Councillor Mac Bain supported the resolution saying any corporation shouldn’t be afraid to do an operational review and hopes it’s unique.
He also says previous councils have looked into doing external reviews.
“The reason council didn’t do an external review is because there was a report to council about the cost, it’s not going to be inexpensive to do,” Bain says. “I hope this will be discussed during our budget process to see what the cost will be.”
The motion also directs the CAO to freeze hiring on new positions and gap vacated positions, where possible, until the completion of the 2023 Budget.
