Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 3/1/2018 (989 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

The city’s municipal government has some rebuilding of trust to do if it wants to get off to a good start in 2018.

Winnipeg city hall ended 2017 with huge questions surrounding governance in general and seemingly fractured relationships amongst key players.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES City of Winnipeg CAO Doug McNeil (left) stands beside Mayor Brian Bowman at city hall.

The city’s chief administrative officer, Doug McNeil, is on the hot seat over a number of issues, including his handling of the planned extension of the Sterling Lyon Parkway. He argues that an option for the project not requested by council ought not to have been brought forward, though it seems he himself was advised of it in a report he received months earlier. Some councillors want the city auditor to review this file; others want McNeil suspended.

A host of senior civic staff have voluntarily left city employ under strange circumstances. In these pages in recent weeks, a host of very senior retired civic managers have chimed in, questioning both McNeil and some members of council.

Relations amongst senior civic managers appear to be fractured — they are anything but a united group. Relations between civic managers and council itself also appear to be, at best, strained.

The city and the province, another important relationship, are at odds with one another over issues including funding cuts to Winnipeg Transit and ambulance services, as well as the downloading of responsibility for vehicle ride-sharing services to the city.

Within council itself, there are strained relations far beyond the normal cut and thrust of the political process. Mayor Brian Bowman has mastered the art of securing a solid majority of votes on council on all key issues, leaving a number of councillors on the outside looking in. More often than not, it is from this group that we hear opposition to the direction the city is headed.

Lastly — and perhaps most significantly — relations between the city as a whole and its citizens have been tested over a host of issues, including the recent Saturday parking rules in which new enforcement practices were reversed within days after pushback from citizens. While it is admirable that citizen protest can yield results, it is painful to watch the city stumble as it has lately on a host of issues.

At a much higher level, many citizens await news whether our former mayor and CAO will face legal consequences for the debacle of the new police headquarters and allegations of improper conduct at the highest levels of the city.

As we enter 2018 — an election year — one might ask how things got to this point. Who is responsible for the apparent levels of dysfunction?

Prior to tackling these questions, it is instructive to look to some recent civic history.

Just over two decades ago, another crisis enveloped city hall. Hundreds of millions of dollars in successful assessment appeals caused the creation of an inquiry into property tax assessment, led by city lawyer John Scurfield.

Scurfield, in a detailed report, zeroed in on governance issues and failed relationships at the civic level. In commenting on the prevailing culture at the city, he termed it "a defensive, reactionary climate where ‘big picture’ thinking is not practised."

In the current Sterling Lyon Parkway debate, the CAO asks us to accept that he cannot be expected to read recommendations senior staff send to him. The local councillor at the centre of this debacle has remained silent on allegations that, like the CAO, he was fully apprised of all options throughout the planning process.

I suspect Scurfield would have had little respect for such behaviour. His 1996 report talked of the "subjugation of business values to the political process" at city hall. He argued that a climate in which senior civic staff became averse to offering their best professional advice was a system that could not work.

Scurfield argued that elected officials must encourage senior staff to offer sound advice which they could then debate. He said that "strong leaders, not sycophants, must be encouraged."

At city hall today, we hear the words "accountability" and "responsibility" thrown around while no one practises these fundamental leadership values.

Throwing subordinate staff under the bus, as the city’s CAO has done, is not leadership. Silence from our mayor while he takes political shots at some members of council is not leadership.

John Scurfield captured past flaws in civic governance that he felt explained our city’s expensive assessment-appeal fiasco of the early 1990s. The issues today are different, but the governance flaws are the same — and no citizen should find this acceptable.

Paul Moist is a retired civic union leader. He was employed by the city from 1975 to 2015.