MOOSE JAW — Coun. Patrick Boyle wants to eliminate as much red tape and bureaucracy as possible within city hall to benefit residents and businesses, but his efforts may have caused their own red tape.
During city council’s recent regular meeting, Boyle moved that city administration develop a red-tape reduction strategy and establish a committee comprising every departmental director and other employees.
Furthermore, he wanted administration to report to council twice a year on the committee’s efforts and successes it has achieved, including but not limited to, improvements in issuing permits, approvals, wait times, and process enhancements that result in financial savings and/or better customer service.
Boyle acknowledged that administration is already doing this work and has previously discussed how city hall has identified and eliminated “some unnecessary things” that hamper development.
“And that leads into streamlining a lot of our processes and asking those questions (of) how are we doing this and how can we improve it,” he said.
Boyle noted that his motion was not “a slight against administration,” but instead focused on improving processes and giving directors the ability to ask “those tough questions” more publicly and enabling council to support those efforts.
For example, city hall could consider issuing one permit for a project instead of five, or it could address more matters digitally since other governments were also reviewing their processes, he added. Also, this direction could lessen the bureaucratic burden on administration while improving services for citizens.
Coun. Dawn Luhning said she was unsure what Boyle wanted to do since his comments were unclear, while besides red tape, he also wanted technology and software issues addressed at city hall.
She pointed out that these initiatives required more information from administration about how it would pay for these changes, how much in-house time was required and how this would divert employees from other priorities.
“I’m struggling in the second paragraph to understand what it is you’re looking for … ,” Luhning added. “I don’t feel like there’s direct content there that administration can grab onto as to what it is you want them to achieve.”
In response, Boyle said his motion gave administration the tools to reduce red tape, such as cutting wait times, timelines or approvals that limited or negatively affected service levels.
Continuing, he said his motions were open-ended so administration could craft these efforts and inform council how it would handle this situation. Moreover, if directors required tools or software, they could make such requests during budget.
“It could be a small change in the process within city hall that actually ends up with a major impact on residents … ,” Boyle said. “This is not a new innovative thinking, but … it has not trickled down far enough to help support municipal governments in a certain way.”
City manager Maryse Carmichael said she was concerned about which employees would comprise the committee, so she wanted the power to decide its members.
Meanwhile, she pointed out that two years ago during budget, administration brought a new online e-permitting software program to council for approval, which will launch this year.
Continuing, Carmichael said red tape reduction efforts are already occurring, while this motion will make extra work for her and every department director.
“Can some processes be streamlined? Absolutely,” she remarked, noting that departments — such as planning and development — previously reviewed many processes with issuing permits or performing work when implementing the e-permitting system.
Carmichael added that producing a followup report was important since she didn’t want to commit immediately to providing twice-yearly updates on those efforts.
Coun. Chris Warren acknowledged that city hall already performed this type of work daily, but thought the motion added structure to identifying areas where the city “could find some quick wins (and) some successes,” including updating application forms and checklists on the website.
Furthermore, Warren liked city staff being involved since they had “lots of ideas,” while he liked that administration would report twice a year, allowing council to share those victories with the community.
Coun. Heather Eby said administration’s reports could come at budget or with quarterly reports and need not be “full-blown” or “onerous” since the work was already happening.
After discussion, Boyle amended his motion so that “relevant staff members” were included on the committee; council voted 6-1 in favour, with Luhning opposed.
Eby then moved to refer everything back to administration for a report, which council defeated.
Council then defeated Boyle’s motion to create a red tape reduction strategy and establish a committee, while it approved the motion to have city administration report twice a year on those existing efforts.
