Searle's World ReportsJeremy Searle (250)    Jeremy Searle    Searle's World Reports Montreal City Council Needs Fixing and We Should Start With the Executive CommitteePosted Friday, June 06, 2008 (27 days 18 hours ago.) Viewed 10 times. City councils are supposed to be places of calm deliberation where bylaws and business are debated openly and voted upon and decided in public. Unfortunately, in Montreal everything is done in secret and council itself acts largely as a rubber stamp for decisions that have already been finalized by the all powerful executive committee. To make debate and questioning even more difficult the mounds of paper describing the agenda items are delivered to the councillors too soon before the meetings to allow for anything more than the cursory study of a few selected items. Even then, debate is further discouraged because questions that do get asked usually do not get responded to before they have already been voted on and the agenda items concerned already adopted. This total secrecy facilitates the air of incompetence that has permeated the current and previous administration because of course, when things are done in secret there is a very low performance threshold. Outside observers have very little information on which to judge and, for all we know, some of the committee members may be doing nothing at all. Apart from the mayor, the executive committee has 11 members - most of them with very small portfolios and responsibilities - and most of them are consequently and understandably unknown to the public. The one thing for sure is that they collect very large salaries and have the use of taxpayer-provided city limousines while we have no way of knowing what they actually do in return. Various thinkers throughout the ages have sought to explain the nature and functioning of sound political management. Perhaps the greatest and most effective political manager in modern times was Winston Churchill, who provided very clear leadership from the top and managed with a cabinet of six members to direct and win the war effort from 1939 to 1945. Perhaps part of the Montreal problem is that there is little or no direction at the top. In Montreal, we have a mayor who has chosen to take no role in the day-to-day running of the city and who is so apparently disinterested that he has no specific responsibility or "dossier" on the executive committee. Instead, he interferes from time to time with usually dismal results (remember the FINA swim meet fiasco?). By comparison, Churchill, as a model of hands-on leadership in World War II, took not only the role of prime minister but also of minister of war. He had a definite job to do and as such he was able to maintain the confidence of both Parliament and the people and to never falter as a convincing leader. Tremblay has no visible role to play and so his ship flounders for lack of a captain on deck. Clearly, direction is lacking at the top because, even though the city has a huge budget and employs a huge workforce, the roads are broken, the pipes are leaking and a whiff of delay and do-nothing hangs in the air. Why is this, and why is our city council not directing matters with more clarity, imagination and forcefulness? Happily, fixing the Montreal executive committee (and by extension its council) and making its members work while improving the administration of the city would be relatively easy if only there was political will. First and foremost, the executive committee should, with the exception of a few delicate items such as budget preparation, start holding all of its meetings in public rather than in secrecy as is now the case. This would force its members to get serious and to start addressing the real issues rather than chasing headlines and pursuing party political considerations. Currently, the administration spends far too much time in announcing grandiose schemes that will never happen (unless some other level of government coughs up the cash) and in issuing large numbers of expensive contracts for legal and consulting work. Items of these sorts would have more difficulty in surfacing or in passing subsequent debate in council if they were first to be aired in public. Not only should the executive committee meet in public but there should be a system of public council commissions or sub-committees where all items destined for council would get a public airing prior to council debate and voting. Commissions of this sort would be chaired by the appropriate executive committee members and would allow other councillors and members of the public and media to pose questions and make suggestions. A system of this sort would allow sensible amendments and for changes to be made to proposals before they became too far advanced in the system and before the administration-ego associated with council meetings got in the way. Six permanent commissions of council do already exist and these meet regularly but they have no apparent function other than to generate extra income for their members and they do not address city council agenda items. These could be usefully abolished to make way for new working commissions. In this way there would be no secrecy and unnecessary executive committee posts (probably half of them) would be rapidly eliminated because it would become impossible to justify them in the light of genuine public and press scrutiny. Surviving members would have to justify their positions on a day-to-day basis and things might actually start to move and to get done in our city. The propositions above are neither original nor revolutionary but simply reflect best practice in many other more ably managed cities. Comments: jeremy.searle@sympatico.ca 
Permalink Comments (0) And, Now For the New Library. Ndg Sports and Recreation Complex Funding Points the WayPosted Wednesday, May 28, 2008 (36 days 16 hours ago.) Viewed 9 times. After downtown Montreal with its money generating office towers and high rentals, the borough of NDG/CDN is the biggest contributor to the city tax pool. However, for the longest time it has had the lowest per capita budget of any borough in the city of Montreal and even this has been disproportionately spent in the Cote des Neiges sector in successful attempts to buy votes there. This column tells the story of how thousands of determined NDG residents turned things around and have finally forced reluctant and lazy local reps to provide some significant services for their community. Back in September 2000 when I launched the campaign for an NDG sports and recreation complex, the chances looked pretty bleak but the vast Benny Farm site was up for sale and the necessary land was available. But even though NDG was the only significant area of the city without a sports and recreation complex, city hall wanted to keep it that way because this left more money to throw about in points east. However, people got excited about finally getting something important done for NDG and seemed to sense that this could be the start of future change. Literally thousands of NDGers responded to the campaign by affixing their own postage stamps and mailing back door-to-door petition postcards demanding that the centre go ahead - and then repeated the process on three or four more occasions across the ensuing years. Public pressure first convinced Canada Lands to reserve a section of the Benny Farm housing site for the future centre and city hall was then forced and shamed into buying the land for the project. Soon, the tipping point arrived wherein the population became sufficiently involved and informed and came to expect the project rather than to merely want it. Expectation is the terror of politicians because, while failure to respond to wants is rather expected, political failure to fulfil genuine, deeply felt, expectations is usually rewarded with "throwing the rascals out." Despite growing public pressure and support for the project, the borough mayor nonetheless tried to deflect the concerted public pressure by proposing to build in Benny Park across the road from the land already reserved for the project. The idea of building in the park was clearly intended to generate public opposition to the project since people do not like the loss of already limited green space. If the neighbours could have been encouraged to sign up in sufficient numbers to call a local referendum and overturn the zoning change necessary for building in the park, they could then have been blamed for killing the project and the local reps could have gone back to sleep. Fortunately, the park-rezoning opponents failed to get enough signatures and the politicians had no way out left to them but to get on with it and forge ahead. Even NDG's MNA, who had previously opposed the sports and recreation centre project, was shamed into representation and helped to pry out provincial funding to help realise the project. Now, thanks to unrelenting public pressure, it seems that NDG, which has until now been the uncared for cash cow of the city, is going to start getting some services comparable to those already provided for everyone else in the city. A NEW LIBRARY FOR NDG Parallel to the sports and recreation situation, NDG also remains the only significant area of the city that lacks a proper library (there are currently two tiny offerings that provide extremely limited services). Now, following last year's closure of the private and much-loved Fraser Hickson Library, there is no longer any excuse for withholding city library services from the community. With 60,000 people living in NDG there is a pressing need for a library at least up to half-sized Westmount's standards. When I launched the sports and recreation complex campaign in 2000, the new city library was always part of the plan but it would have been unrealistic to press for too much at the beginning. Now that we have won the first phase of the program we can now launch the campaign for a new, first-class, city library on the Benny Farm land that is now available for it. With the ball now rolling I imagine that the population of NDG will once more come on board and succeed in making the west end an even better place to live. Nothing succeeds like success. And, since this is a story about how committed people get things done it needs to be said that the 10,000 or so people who participated in the campaign over the years are the ones who have made the sports and recreation complex possible. Thank you all. In addition, while copies of the first petition postcards that you mailed back to me were presented to city hall, I preserved and laminated the thousands of colourful originals in a tableau four feet high and 60 feet long. When the sports and recreation complex is built it is my intention to ensure that they will be displayed there as a permanent reminder of what public participation and individuals' tenacity can achieve. The current local reps may not agree but, if you share my viewpoint, it will be your job to ensure that they do not survive the next election to have a further say in the matter. Comments: jeremy.searle@sympatico.ca
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