The October election promises to be interesting for a change.
In fact, change may be the operative word because it will be promised by the giant roster of candidates and the real question will be whether or not it is simply a tired cliché or an actual goal for the new city council. I know little about the rookie candidates and I doubt whether I will be able to sort out their agendas before the election, but I do know there is a real possibility for a host of new people on city council this year.
The ghosts of bike lanes past will continue to haunt the councilors who voted in favour of this ill-conceived fiasco because it is still an issue a year after Red Deer paid $750,000 to paint lines on major streets and screw up traffic flow in an already congested city.
Most people took no comfort in a Federation of Canadian Municipalities award for this ill-advised bike lane project and I seriously doubt whether recognition by other cities’ public officials was enough to stem the tide of resentment. A few council members even used this dubious award as an endorsement of the bike lane program and I would suggest they were severely delusional if they believed people were even remotely happy with their assessment of the award’s value.
At least the bike lane issue was brought to light before an election, unlike the giant Collicutt Centre construction deficit announced very shortly after the 2001 civic election so it had no impact on the incumbents’ election chances.
I want people who can read a spreadsheet on our city council. I want them to assess the fundamental difference between wants and needs in the city because they will face an endless barrage of bureaucrats who will want to push the agenda for their departments.
The firmly entrenched reality is a system where seasoned administrators and managers will explain their vision of how City Hall works to the council and it will be a highly complicated process. The whole system is divided into an excessive number of departments whose basic functions overlap but are designed to appear autonomous enough to exist under a separate umbrella. The beauty of this system for its practitioners is its ability to complicate the decision process in a not-my-department way.
The result is an expensive and layered system of management that has grown in size if not efficiency over the years. Make no mistake about it; the new city councillors will face a barrage of numbers and a traditional way of doing business City Hall style. The rookie councilors will need to be able to absorb a daily avalanche of financial figures that may or may not add up, depending upon their business acumen.
The new city council will need to understand how money is currently spent and how it could be better spent on Red Deer’s most serious needs. For instance, did we really need an excessively lavish city yard built near a flood plain when the greater concern is safer streets with fewer pothole, snow and crime issues on them?
As I stated earlier, city councillors need to distinguish between the wants and needs of the city. More often than not “the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many” at City Hall, instead of the other way around.
Do not buy into the noisy and motivated special interest group agendas that you will face as a councillor. You will have to serve the best interests of the majority of Red Deerians first and foremost — and they have pretty basic needs.
You will be asked to fund everything from new swimming pools to arts projects and you will have to determine whether your choices address the actual needs and best interests of the majority of the people here in Red Deer. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on unwanted bike lanes and it got people very angry about how money is spent by City Hall, but the bike lanes were hardly the only questionable financial decision made by these people over the years.
The new city council will have to abandon any notion they are a bank machine for every community project and group with a personal agenda. They will have to examine how the money is spent by this city’s administration and whether we need to have so many layers of people at City Hall spending public money.
Red Deer is a city saddled with $199.1 million of debt with no end in sight. The debt situation is considered normal by City Hall people, but they set the parameters for debt normalcy. I want to see a city council that asks the tough questions about expenditures and makes good decisions about the entire spending process. That would be real dog-wagging-the-tail change.
Jim Sutherland is a local freelance writer.