A very good question
As Blogspot continues to screw up the Blogosphere, despite being owned by Google and its multi-billions (you would have thought they might support some of their endeavours but I guess counting money is too important a task to split away from), a comment popped up that required more attention than it would get being buried in the comments log.
The gist of it was, "Ben can you tell us when the coordinator system came in and what was used prior to it?" Good question.
The coordinator system came into being in 1985, when the Angus Read era came to Town. Major Angus Read, a retired Army Officer had settled in Cobourg after commanding the now closed Ordnance Depot on D'Arcy St. Fitting right into the social milieau of the cocktail set and the Rotary Club he, or others, decided that the then Mayor (who has recently died) Mac Lees was past it and needed to be replaced. In a move that I have never got to the bottom of Mac announced his retirement as Mayor after a couple of decades of public service and the Major won the election on a promise of bringing the Town into the 20th Century.
One of the first things he did, as he had a majority of new members, was to implant his style of top-down management. Making the clerk subordinate was easy, Bryan Baxter was the consummate civil servant and they produced a plan to eliminate the system of 'standing committees'. Cobourg Council used to meet every two weeks and in the other two weeks three standing committees used to meet. I can't remember the names of them but I do know that the incumbent councillors of the day used to proclaim, in their campaign literature, that they were the "Chairs" of this committee or that committee. Anyway all councillors had to be kept occupied as there more then than now.
Back to Angus's 'efficiency drive' he had determined that items of business, usually planning and development pieces were taking too long in committees and slowing down the business of Council. A matrix was produced and it laid out who could talk to whom, who reported to whom and a councillor was given a 'portfolio' of responsibilities. Hence the coordinator system. All coordinators reported to Council about their activities to the committee of the whole, which was created to replace one of the regular Council meetings. An informal protocol was created, and it still exists today, where knowledge of each portfolio was hoarded by the coordinator and if questions were asked by another councillor it seemed to be resented by the portfolio holder and interpreted as interference. This attitude still persists today. Consequently when one approached one councillor for an answer to a general problem one would be directed to the guardian of the information. This also leads to a system of cronyism as most councillors want to achieve something, usually a staff item of little importance, votes must be cultivated so all councillors 'go along to get along'.
So the result is an atmosphere of a club of narrowly informed coordinators as a opposed to a group of well informed concillors. That's my version of the past folks please correct me if I am faulty in my institutional memory. all I know is that the present system is systemically disfunctional as far as democratic engagement goes but probably very efficient in policy delivery. But that's why we have pols and bureaucrats and never the twain should meet but as we see it has for many years as members of Council appear to be bureaucrats not politicians.
9 comments:
Thanks Ben. Now, in the context of this information, how does your recommendation come into play? Are you advocating a return to the same format as the one that pre-existed the Ried mayoralty, a version of it, or something different again?
I think this is far more productive and informative than ranting about undefined change of any sort, just as long as it's change.
what I propose is something like the first system but instead of having three committees of seperate councillors only sitting on one committee all councillors would sit in all three committees and then have a Council meeting on the fourth week to handle the business coming out of the committees. All councillors would be privy to the same information, less staff would be needed to attend meetings (saving money) and no prima donnas claiming to be the Chair for ego purposes. The appointment of Chair would be rotated amongst all councillors.
The actual system is closed and the mayor enforces it scrupulously. Councillors vote with their eyes wide shut!
The second thing which Ben will understand and not well-known is the DISCRETIONARY POWER POLICY WHICH SHOULD DISAPPEAR FROM THE COBOURG COUNCIL RULES OF GOVERNANCE. This rule gives too much power, as it is never used properly here in Cobourg.( Nobody in semi-rural Ontario has such rule except Cobourg.) In exercising discretionary powers, various principles of administrative law require public officials to:
• use discretionary powers in good faith and for a proper purpose (ie, honestly and only within the scope of and for the purpose for which the power was given)
• base their decision on logically probative material (ie, logical reasons, information that proves the issues in question, relevant and reliable evidence)
• consider only relevant considerations and not consider irrelevant considerations
• give adequate weight to a matter of great importance but not give excessive weight to a relevant factor of no great importance
• exercise their discretion independently and not act under the dictation or at the behest of any third person or body
• give proper, genuine and realistic consideration to the merits of the particular case, and not apply policy inflexibly, and
• observe the basic rules of procedural fairness.
Ben:
Your description of the coming into being of the portfolio system is interesting and informative.
I don't think it is necessarily fair to blame all the shortcomings of the system on Angus Read. I think that the system might have been a good way of getting some coordinated action out of chaos when it was initiated. The problem is that subsequent councillors have seen it as a convenient way of limiting their responsibilities and of keeping prying noses out of their portfolios.
Since you were on the council for some time I defer to your knowledge of the system, but in my short time in Cobourg I have had the experience and honour of working with the two mayors previous to Delanty and have been impressed with their knowledge of the system and their ongoing commitment to the town.
The answer is definitely the abolition of the portfolio system and the reinstitution of committees with more than one councillor on each, but I am not sure that the "three big committees" routes the right one. I would like to hear some positive information about how other municipalities outside Northumberland County handle their affairs before making a jump to a new system.
If a consensus among readers of the Burd Report can be achieved about the best way to reorganize the system, the next problem becomes how to get the idea popularly accepted. Perhaps you could to write an article for the MSM and start a discussion among the various contenders for the new council, thus getting some validity to the process and may be even some buy-in for it.
The answer is definitely the abolition of the portfolio system and the reinstitution of committees with more than one councillor on each, but I am not sure that the "three big committees" routes the right one. I would like to hear some positive information about how other municipalities outside Northumberland County handle their affairs before making a jump to a new system.
the problem with not having three big committees is that you still have the lack of information about specific subjects not known to the councillors who are not on the committee. In a perfect system one would establish specific ad-hoc committees to discuss individual topics of interest or concern that would arise from time to time, that is also done today.
Angus Read is RESPONSIBLE FOR the poor committee system we have. A lot of "old Cobourg" remarked on it. The after-war generation is still too strong in this part of Ontario. It is a fact of life. UofT students with a first year in political science are aware of committee system now, and this existent system is "old military" tactic which should not be used when you are paying the high taxes we pay.
Ben is not exagerating at all! Look at Loken when she was on council,she was fighting to share information. She had a cartoon painted as goldie lux and the bears. This was not just a joke.
Of course town council meetings ( whether council or committee-of-the-whole) are often used to take up time with trivial matters, so that the significant items do not have to be debated.
An example of unending trivia is the need to pass a bylaw (in three readings) every time there is a temporary road closure. Why could not all the road closures be done at the beginning of the year in one by-law, or even better road closure permission could be delegated to a council official and need not go to council at all.
This waste of time on road closure items is to be contrasted with the way that significant expenditures of money all seem to get decided behind closed doors before the council is asked to vote on them. Examples of this would be the Frink an the "CCC".
Interestingly the theory that council deliberations should be made in public session is regularly disregarded. An example is when all the councillors decide to gang up on Councillor Mutton and to vote against her properly made recommendations. It is generally understood that the rest of the council have discussed this in private before-hand, since they never feel the need to give any plausible explanations in public.
Unfortunately, unless these abuses of the system are dealt with there seems be little point in trying to improve the efficiency or effectiveness of council meetings.
Council watcher mentions the word "debate" but that's hardly what one might call the little 'discussions' that sometimes happen during second readings. It's a toss-up as to when these things need (or get) to be discussed in their entirety and at the depth needed to resolve the fundamentals, but we get little of it in the open at and from council. They just seem to recap their positions during the second readings and then vote. I get the impression that the good old mayor tries to get unanimity on the major items, but I could be wrong. He certainly shows his displeasure when there is dissension in his ranks. Maybe he could see that his 'style' was being eroded and the future was more of the same (Mutton's not going away any time soon) so he decided to pack it in.
Regardless, the question is 'how do we get the best outcome for every issue?' - the method is simply an operational matter. We can talk 'systems' all day and night long but what happens during the discussion and resolution phases is what really should be the focus. That depends in its entirety on who is doing the thinking and verbalizing. I don't accept that a 'system' can keep a good person from achieving, but it can make it extremely difficult under certain types of 'leadership'. Just changing the 'system' won't guarantee any better results than what we have now. Get the right minds into the right places and things will happen, regardless of the system being used.
BEN:
I wonder why people can't research their question on their own. We should deal with the technicalities alone and control our Town budget and making decision-makers role easier.
The county should not be involved with the control of our Town. First, we are too different by nature.They are too busy making sense reading the Almanach and the committee of cows!
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