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Jeremy Searle

Montreal City Council Needs Fixing and We Should Start With the Executive Committee

Posted Friday, June 06, 2008 (1 year 155 days ago.) Viewed 69 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

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And, Now For the New Library. Ndg Sports and Recreation Complex Funding Points the Way

Posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008 (1 year 164 days ago.) Viewed 244 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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If the city is dirty, blame Marcel Tremblay

Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008 (1 year 171 days ago.) Viewed 33 times.

If you think that the city streets are clean and that the snow is removed expeditiously and on time, call the mayor's brother, Marcel and congratulate him. If not, read the following article and, if you agree with the conclusions, call the mayor (514-872-3101) and let him know. After all, Marcel Tremblay is the person on the executive committee responsible for these dossiers and elected people are supposed to be there to give the buck somewhere to stop.

In most of the sensibly organized world street cleaning is the lowest paid of jobs and serves to create employment for many people who would otherwise be out of work. However, in Montreal street cleaning is all done by highly-paid city employees who consequently have little enthusiasm for the menial work of pushing a broom or hefting a shovel. In Montreal we use noisy and expensive "Madvac" vacuum cleaning machines to clean the sidewalks, not for cost efficiency but rather to help justify labour cost inefficiency. For the same reason, gutters are cleaned by big machines rather than by people pushing brooms who would then bag the waste.

However, our blue collar workers cannot be given brooms because it would underline the absurdity of their inflated salaries (in relation to the private sector). How could you justify to the public that pushing a broom is worth more than $50,000 a year when many families live on total incomes of less than half of that while doing work that is usually far more demanding?

To make matters worse, cleaning work is done in the daytime so as to avoid contract-necessitated overtime pay but also because the Tremblays (big and little) want you to see your tax dollars at work.

Meanwhile, teams of two people with bristle brooms, shovels and bundles of garbage bags would be fully capable of cleaning each of our major streets' sidewalks and gutters as long as the work was done in the small hours of the morning. Following this plan, the dirt and garbage would be swept up by the same workers and left in bags along the sidewalk to be picked up by garbage trucks before the traffic started in the early morning. It would then be possible for water spray trucks to pass and to leave the streets sparkling and the air fresh and pleasing to breathe.

In this way the population would become accustomed to a city that started every day clean and free of litter and dirt, and continuing cleanup would become increasingly simple. People tend to respect a clean environment more than a dirty one.

Of course, it is not just the fault of the Tremblay brothers and their lacklustre administration. Montrealers are also to blame for many of their lazy habits such as failing to clean up in front of their own homes or businesses. However, we pay our taxes to pay for cleanup services and currently the city is not fulfilling its part of the job.

Municipal administrators of the Tremblay ilk also like to blame on-street garbage problems on people who sneak out from apartment buildings and fill the public bins with household waste. Of course they do. People who live in apartment buildings that lack garbage storage rooms or secure outside bins can hardly be expected to store food waste for three or four days at a time in the summer.

If Marcel or Grald Tremblay had to store rotting summer garbage waste in their homes for days at a time, the problem would be solved overnight. The solution is simple enough and merely requires the reallocation of existing resources. Private homes with outdoor spaces to put secure metal garbage cans and apartment buildings with storage rooms could easily get by with one instead of two garbage pick-ups per week and this would free up the resources necessary for servicing other, more pressing needs.

With better allocated pick-up resources, on-street garbage bins could, as necessary, be emptied every day (in the summer at least) while those older apartment buildings unable to provide either indoor or outdoor storage for garbage should get more frequent pick-up (daily if necessary). Those of us fortunate enough to live in relative comfort should be prepared to give up a little of it for those living in less privileged conditions.

Comments: jeremy.searle@sympatico.ca

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Searle's World Reports

Montreal City Council Needs Fixing and We Should Start With the Executive Committee

And, Now For the New Library. Ndg Sports and Recreation Complex Funding Points the Way

If the city is dirty, blame Marcel Tremblay

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