Groundhog
Day. Each election we send people to Council who we support and are
sometimes even enthusiastic about. Eventually they fall well short of
our expectations and we vilify them. General consensus is we need to
send better people in. It’s a minority opinion right now I guess but I
want to suggest the game is rigged, the deck stacked.
Municipal
governance is long overdue for reform. We send 9 people in to a large
complex organization run by career managers and technocrats (each within
powerful silos that compete with each other for funding) to oversee
their activities. New Councillors find they are without any support
resources— a desk, an office out in the community to meet with
constituents, research staff...
The new Council is not required
to earn a mandate from the electorate by proposing a detailed, costed
platform. Unlike the political party based Provincial and Federal
legislatures their election comes with the right to sit at the table but
not to exercise power. If Council are unable to wisely and judiciously
exercise power once they get established, those power silos I mentioned
are ready and eager to wield it. We end up with institutional
dysfunction, the wrong people asking the wrong questions, engineers
busily solving problems they weren't asked to or equipped to solve.
We need a system of municipal government that better meets our needs.
The existing system is a creation of the Provincial Government and
therein lies the core problems. Solutions will have to include some
devolution of powers and taxation authority from the Provincial
government. They won’t be volunteering to do that. Our senior levels of
government spend a huge amount of their time and resources protecting
their precious jurisdictions.
Cities generate the prosperity
which fuels Provincial governments, and a very small amount is returned
to the city to invest in its economy and solve its problems..
A
Provincial election is weeks away and if there are any proposals on the
table to bring 21st Century reforms to cities large and small I haven’t
heard them.
Here’s former Vancouver Chief Planner Brent Toderian on silos: I'm finding these days that as I'm advising cities around the
world about better city-making, the conversations... Read more at Planetizen: Better City-Making Means Breaking Down Silos—Here's How
No comments:
Post a Comment