Change the Council-Staff Dynamic

I believe that the City Manager’s action in withholding the consultant’s report from Council so it could be massaged and “interpreted” by staff was clearly outside the role of a Chief Administrator that is outline in the Municipal Act and summarized in an Ontario Government Paper titled; “Role of council, councilor and staff”.²³ The fact the city manager felt so confident in his relationship with Council that he would tell members of council that he was holding back a report on a study that was marketed as being “independent”, so staff could “interpret” it, gives us some insight into his perception of the relationship. This caused some to question, who was really in charge at city hall. This exemplifies one of the pitfalls of a part time council. That is there is often an unhealthy dependence on staff for guidance to the extent that the level of trust becomes so strong that it causes members of council to routinely accept staff proposals as direction as opposed to suggestions. This is a recipe for disaster, or in our case it’s a recipe for wildly growing expenses that are not in line with similar municipalities.

I have over 30 years of experience managing public service administrations in both federal and provincial environments. What I’ve learned over the years is that in traditional public service administrations, public service managers sometimes have their own informal organizational goals that are often in conflict with the organization’s formal leadership. Therefore it is essential for each member of council to understand the potential for conflicting goals and challenge staff when necessary. It’s also important to maintain an arms-length approach to their relationships with senior staff and apply a good measure of independent, critical thinking when considering staff proposals.

I believe that a major contributing factor in the gross disparities between Owen Sound and both the municipalities in the study group and Grey/Bruce County municipalities is the interface between members of council and the senior staff. It is highly probable that there are conflicting goals at play and senior staff have been the victors over the years as evidenced by the growth in Administration and the growth expenses.

Here is just one small example of how staff manipulates Committees and Council to achieve their desired outcome that occurred at the Corporate Services Committee Meeting on November 09, 2023. BDO Canada, the city’s auditor, briefed the Committee on new rules issued by the Public Sector Audit Board regarding Asset Retirement Obligations (ARO’s). The staff proposal involved hiring a consultant to assist staff in identifying any potential obligations for every asset and hiring a part time finance person to assist with the workload. Staff claimed that they “didn’t have the expertise or the time” to perform, what appears to be well within the scope of any professional working in the Corporate Services Department. Members of the Committee suggested that the city should not doing anything this fiscal but to put it off until next year to give time to better assess what others were doing. One member of the Committee made a motion to that effect. This sparked an immediate reaction from staff. I invite you to watch the video of this meeting to see what I mean. Watch the expression on the Clerks face in response to the motion (Committee - Corporate Services - November 09, 2023 (escribemeetings.com)).

Both the Director and the City Manager spoke strongly against postponing the action largely arguing that the situation wouldn’t change next year so we should just do it this year. It was obvious that staff were counting on their proposal being approved and were taken back by this motion to postpone. They had even done research on how BDO could provide the consultant services by saying that the BDO consultant doing the ARO work would come from a different BDO office. In fact the Director even stated that there might be advantage to engaging BDO services since their auditors would be familiar with the other office’s work style. This seems to me to be an obvious conflict since BDO auditors would be auditing work done by BDO consultants. In the end the arguments made by the City Manager and the Director of Corporate Services persuaded enough members against postponing the work and the motion was defeated. As a result the city will hire a Part Time person in Finance and the city will spend $35,000 on a consultant to perform work that I believe is within the scope of city staff.

So what prompted these senior managers to argue against a motion in spite of not having a vote? Staff were not members of this Committee. Could it be that without this new work they wouldn’t have an argument for a new Part Time employee? Who Knows? What we do know is that Corporate Services is overstaffed and has at least one more than other similar municipalities. Given this, it seems incredulous that Corporate Services lacks the capacity to absorb this additional workload.

I believe that this is a small example of just how staff can inappropriately influence a Committee and/or Council to achieve their objective. This behavior is quite likely, at least partially, responsible why Owen Sound Expenses and workforce have grown well in excess of similar municipalities. To avoid this staff should not be allowed to present argument in favour of their proposal once a motion has been tabled. Prior to this staff should only speak in response to a question directed specifically to them. In the example you will see, if you watch the video, that the City Manager inserts himself into the discussion without being asked to respond to a specific question.