A proposal from city manager Glen Peace to conduct an inventory of city services ran into opposition at last week's corporate administration committee. Some councillors suggested it had already been done and would prevent city staff from doing their normal jobs.

Peace argues that currently there isn't “a comprehensive list of the services that the city provides, either internally or to the public.” So he's proposing to spend $20,000 and an undetermined amount of staff time “so that we can see if there is any duplication of services”. The study would be completed in a year, and would then “support an aggressive services review program” in phase two to achieve “efficient and effective service delivery.”

The plan drew accolades from several committee members including Phil Bruckler who called it “an excellent initiative” and Maria Pearson who said it was “a terrific starting point”. Glanbrook councillor Dave Mitchell also praised Peace's plan as “long overdue”.

But two of council's most determined cost-cutters were not impressed. Dave Braden felt it was “too overwhelming” to review the whole city government. “I think it's more practical and realistic [to] take a chunk that we can see and understand, in particular one where we see some promise that there might be some real economic advantages to dealing with that one.”

Chad Collins was also unconvinced that the inventory would yield much of value. He recalled that at the time of amalgamation “the transition board spent millions of dollars reviewing every single service in the organization” and that subsequently there have been numerous departmental reviews including at least three of the finance department alone.

“I would rather put the time and energy with staff in the budget process,” Collins suggested. “There's not just the cost of hiring the consultant or having staff pulled away from their day to day operations, there's [also] disruption with the organization going through this.”

Peace responded that he needs the inventory because he is “not absolutely clear on the services we're delivering at the street level” and “until I get that picture to see exactly what everybody is doing in detail”, can't determine how to achieve savings. The city manager took over in February 2004 when Mayor Di Ianni pushed through a resolution to fire former manager Bob Robertson.

A report on what it would cost to do the servicing study was originally ordered by council last December (see item 7.2) in response to a motion put forward by Terry Whitehead. Braden challenged it at that time, fearing it might be “extremely time consuming”, but was reassured by Whitehead that “all it's asking for is the city manager to come back and report on the cost and staff implications of going forward”.

Nine months later, Peace has a price tag, but admitted under questioning by Art Samson that it doesn't include staff time. “Our target date [for the inventory] is September 2007,” said the city manager. “This is a lot of work to do.” However, he assured Samson that the $20,000 won't come out of new taxes, explaining that he will find the money in “one of the existing budgets”.

The plan was approved with the support of Whitehead and Dave Mitchell. Braden and Collins voted against it. See the CATCH report on the meeting for more information. Peace's plan is on the city website.