Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps is proposing the city spend $55,000 to hire a consultant to break down “silos” at city hall while guiding development of a four-year strategic plan.

Helps is recommending council hire Intelligent Management Inc., a consulting firm that works with organizations “to create robust and systemically sound strategies and action plans” and has a track record in moving organizations “from silos to systems.”

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The $55,000 expenditure is almost four times the $15,000 the city spent three years ago for a strategic-planning exercise. The city didn’t seek competitive bids for the proposed consulting work, which would be a sole-source contract based on Helps’ recommendation.

“There was not a [request for proposals] because the mayor doesn’t do RFPs. It’s a bit of a different approach, but as the CEO of the corporation, I’m responsible for helping my council set the strategic direction for the next four years for the staff to implement,” she said.

Helps said she met Intelligent Management founder Domenico Lepore before the recent municipal election but he neither worked on nor contributed to her mayoral campaign.

“He did help with some of my pre-campaign planning in terms of how I think about the city, but he did not make a contribution financial or in-kind to my campaign,” she said.

Helps said the money for the consulting work could be drawn from $105,000 left unspent in the corporate consulting budget, so it doesn’t represent a request for new spending.

But that argument didn’t carry much weight with Coun. Chris Coleman.

“I’m concerned about anything that ramps up costs,” Coleman said, adding that the “sole source” contract is bound to generate discussion.

“We know we need to get into strategic planning, but I suspect there will be some division on council at least with respect to: ‘Why this group?’ ”

Coun. Ben Isitt said he supports the concept, but has concerns about the cost.

“I like the innovative approach that the mayor’s proposing. That’s my overall impression. But the price tag is cause for concern for me,” Isitt said.

In a report going to council Thursday, Helps says council had little input in the development of the strategic planning process in the last term and that process was not completed until 11 months into the term.

Helps said the former process cost $15,000 for external consultants, but was driven by staff and meant countless hours of in-house staff time.

“It took way too long and was way too scattered,” Helps said. “And look at the strategic plan we ended up with. It had no deliverables. It was a bunch of feel-good stuff. It didn’t give anyone any direction to do anything. I don’t want to end up with that again.”

The planning exercise will be conducted in public sessions and web cast, Helps said. “It’s going to look kind of geeky but I think people will be very interested to watch as we do this.”

If council approves the expenditure, Helps hopes work can begin immediately in the new year with the goal of having a four-year strategic plan in place by the end of February.

Once council and senior management have completed the first phase, the city manager might wish to hire Intelligent Management to develop a more detailed work plan, Helps’s report says.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com