Comparison program due for renewal assuming others still want to participate

By Collin Gallant on January 23, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

A program comparing service levels and operating costs in towns and cities across Alberta is suffering from a lack of towns and cities wanting to take part.

Local administrators and elected officials however, are voicing support and calling for greater participation.

The Alberta Municipal Benchmarking Initiative was begun six years ago with Medicine Hat as a founding member. About 10 municipalities shared information and developed a system to compare how they ranked against each other.

That partnership is set to be renewed as new grant funding is sought from the province, but local council members on Monday heard that at this stage Medicine Hat and Lethbridge are the only mid-sized cities on board.

Red Deer and Airdrie have dropped support for the program, and the initial phase didn’t include other mid-sizes cities such as St. Albert, Grande Prairie or Fort McMurray.

Coun. Phil Turnbull told council he strongly supports the studies, but wonders how valuable the data can be if so few comparable cities are taking part.

“One of the questions I’ve always had is ‘how do we know we’re productive?’ or that we have the lowest costs to clean streets or pick up garbage or whatever,” he said, adding that without knowing how operations are handled, comparing budgets only goes so far.

The program has never included major centres of Calgary or Edmonton, and the current grant application also includes only Okotoks, Canmore and Banff.

CAO Merete Heggelund said the exercise is time intensive but valuable, and the hope is more cities will be convinced to join.

“Overall we keep adding to the data, either in participants or years,” she told council.

“We hope to expand that in future years. But even as one city, once you set a base line of how we are operating, internally we see how we compare year after year.”

Mayor Ted Clugston said he’ll raise the issue at upcoming mid-sized mayor’s meetings and lobby for his counterparts to take part.

“There is a lot of value,” said Clugston. “On an economic and political level it’s good to know how we’re doing and where we can improve.”

The first phase began in 2012, and city committees have received final reports covering 2012 to 2014 budget years for fire services, water delivery, sewage treatment and solid waste collection.

About six more study areas are still outstanding, but administrators have said collating the data, and localized conditions (such as weather when comparing snow clearing) has made straight comparisons difficult. Cities also follow their own schedule to release the information.

Lethbridge city council received the report on road maintenance and operations Monday. Local officials have yet to receive a final copy.

Councillors who spoke on the issue Monday also voiced strong support.

Couns. Robert Dumanowski and Julie Friesen said the program was “invaluable.”

A motion to support a new grant application was approved 8-0.

“It should also be our focus to find out if someone knows how to make the wheel run quicker and easier,” said Turnbull.