Evaluating municipal government performance

Mike Bridge, Policy Analyst, Frontier Centre for Public Policy It's municipal election-time in Saskatchewan once again so the promises will be coming fast and furious.

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With annual city spending of over $4,000 for each household in Regina and Saskatoon, city residents must demand that the candidates produce the most innovative platforms possible. But before voters can even figure out whether the existing or prospective politicians are offering sensible positions on a matter, they need information about how well their city is performing in areas important to citizens. And, right now, such calculations are not easy. Any municipal government will claim to perform well, but unless residents can access facts to prove or disprove such claims, there is no way to distinguish between rhetoric and reality. For example, residents should be able to test a city's claim that it is providing an effective public transit system. The cost, the number of people using it and levels of satisfaction compared to last year would be reasonable things for people to find in the city's annual report, but alas, such measurements are not published. In the case of Regina, only when explicitly required to do so by the province does the city publish objective performance data. The water and sewer budget is filled with data relating to the cleanliness of water. But this aberration raises the question: where is such performance data for the other nine of the city's reported expenditure areas? Saskatoon publishes a productivity improvements report, outlining areas where performance has improved and by how much. However this report talks about productivity improvements in terms of saving money, no doubt a popular achievement but somewhat rudderless without reporting the kind of output measurement that is thin in both cities. In total, it is possible to find performance data of some sort for only three of Saskatoon's and four of Regina's reported expenditure areas. Part of the problem may be confusion between results which the two cities' city councils are directly responsible for, and events largely beyond their control. A good example is the 15 achievements listed in Regina's 2008 annual report, which on closer examination show only four that are actually attributable to city hall. For example, the expansion of the John Deere distribution centre and the opening of the Regina Wingate Inn undoubtedly benefit the community, but municipal government can hardly claim them as their own achievements. A brief review of British Columbian, Australian, English, and New Zealand municipalities shows there is a better way for cities to help voters see into their tax-funded operations. In these cases, it is often the norm to have performance reporting that is quantitative, objective, comparable to other years, and linked to expenditure. In Prince George, there is a comprehensive list of the maximum depths that snow can reach before ploughing is required, with separate standards for arterial roads, downtown roads, residential lanes, sidewalks and other publicly-maintained surfaces. In fact, even the timeliness of the response time is measure. The closest Saskatoon and Regina come to such measurement is Regina's poll asking residents' of their opinion on performance. Such general feedback without objective yardsticks isn't very informative for citizens. It also is not very helpful to city employees and management in the quest for improvements. But even the best performance measurements are of limited use unless linked to costs. The city of Christchurch, New Zealand, publishes both the cost and performance of providing each service. For example the cost of maintaining municipal roads is compared with the percentage of vehicles that travel on smooth roads and the average time for a 10-km trip within the city's road network. With this calibre of reporting, voters can make an informed choice about their city's performance and whether services are improving or declining. Voters surely want to know whether they are receiving value for their $4,000. At present, voters lack the information they need to decide if their city is performing adequately, while politicians and others lack the ability to offer concrete remedies for improvement. . In the absence of performance reporting for both Regina and Saskatoon, voters instead must endure a campaign that offers up only mobile mayoral offices. Mike Bridge is a policy analyst with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. His recent report “Pulling back the curtain: How transparent are Regina and Saskatoon?” is available at [url=http://www.fcpp.org]http://www.fcpp.org[/url]

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