We need accountable and responsible government, not more ISDs
PART 1
Two recent documents, one from the Capital Region District (CRD) and another compiled by officials from our 13 municipalities, provide a lengthy and detailed overview of over 350 Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) agreements in the region. Advocates such as retired academic Bob Bish and some municipal mayors trumpet the existence of these “voluntary cooperative partnerships" between municipalities as evidence that the current model of local and regional governance is working well and major reform is not needed. Conversely it can be strongly argued that the system is dysfunctional, unaccountable and out of control.
In Part 1, we discuss the topic of the 155 ISD agreements administered by the CRD is discussed. Part 2 elaborates on the mix of another 201 ISDs foisted upon us by our municipal officials.
The regional district model was created by the Province in late 1960s to accomplish three things;
First, to provide services such as fire, water, recreation, planning, etc. to residents of unorganized areas, a task the CRD does well.
Second, to ensure certain functions mandated as necessary services would be provided to all communities in the region, most notably water supply, landfill and regional parks, which the CRD also does well. [Note: Sewerage treatment is an obvious exception.] However this list of 'must provide' is very limited and badly needs to be updated.
A third category allows regional districts to assume other functions that individual municipal councils have delegated to the regional district to organize and deliver. Each municipality agrees to tax its residents to fund that particular service. Municipalities also have the legal right to opt out and provide their own local services, e.g. water delivery, garbage pickup, fire, police, parks, land use planning, etc.
The third category works well in most of the over 20 regional districts spread across the Province where there is one central community that is a service centre for regional residents, such as Prince George, Cranbrook, and Vernon.
But that third model of governance fails in polycentric areas such as Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria, where there are multiple municipalities with common boundaries. In those situations, localism triumphs over regionalism. The result is a multiplicity of fire and police departments, emergency dispatch centres, conflicting building codes, small scale arts and cultural facilities, and more particularly – a region where no single elected body is in charge.
What's worse, in numerous situations smaller municipalities don’t offer the service(s) and their residents simply travel to the neighbouring municipality and thus are ‘free riders’ to the cost of providing that service. Most notably these costs are borne by urban residents for roads and new bridges, traffic congestion, policing and arts/cultural facilities that are used, but not paid for, by over half of Greater Victoria residents.
The CRD document provides a complex budget chart that details 155 ISD arrangements under the jurisdiction of the CRD Board. It is important to understand that each of these separate functions requires its own legal agreement, financial formulas, management committee and CRD staff to administer. The fundamental fact is that regional districts have no authority to impose taxes, and all such expenditures must first be approved by the various municipal councils who requested that service, then noted as a regional levy, and collected as part of municipal property taxes. The CRD budget chart provides a roadmap of what services they are requested to provide, by whom, and how costs are being allocated between residents of various parts of the region.
[Note: the CRD operating budget is $217 million, plus a capital budget of $98 million. Operating funds are generated by municipal property tax requisitions of $72 million, plus user fees of $104 – mainly from water sales to municipalities.]
A quick review reveals that 87 ISD agreements are for services to residents in the unorganized areas of Juan de Fuca, Saltspring Island, and Southern Gulf Islands.
Another 27 ISD agreements involve 2 - 7 of the small municipalities, mainly on the Westshore or Peninsula. Notably another 26 ISDs are related to sewer system management and we know how poorly that has worked!
But more concerning is that only 15 ISD agreements involve all 13 member municipalities for regional-scale service delivery.
Clearly the CRD is upside down. Despite the Regional Board composition, with 21 of its 24 members from the 13 municipalities, it spends the majority of time dealing with services to a population of less than 50,000. Very little time is devoted to managing the needs of our 300,000 urban residents
Does that make sense, considering that over 70% of all travel is inter-municipal travel? Residents reside in one place, but 'live' regionally to travel to play, work, study or shop. Seldom are airports, ferries, major shopping areas, college/university or places of employment situated in the home municipality of the majority of residents. It is clear that the organization of local government in the region does not reflect how we actually live and depend on others to provide essential services.
Academics characterize our governance situation as “heavy institutions, weak authority.”
And more particularly the charts show, by their absence from the list key service, that critical needs such as emergency services, transportation, and arts/cultural services are not deal with at the regional level. Further, the need to respond to matters that do not respect municipal boundaries, such as climate change, protection of environmental values, natural disasters, etc. are not addressed.
Continue to read Part 2, which will provide an overview of another 201 separate ISD arrangements organized and provided amongst municipalities, separate from those administered by the CRD. Horrors!
PART 2
In Part 1, the 155 Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) agreements administered by the Capital Region District (CRD) were discussed.
In Part 2 we review a revealing 22 page document compiled by officials to document the purpose and membership of an astonishing 201 voluntary agreements between the 13 municipalities. Prescribed services are delivered either by municipal staff or private contractors. Each municipality can decide if and where to participate, and whether to commit funding, staff or facilities to a common cause. And of course each of these arrangements requires unique formal agreements, membership, funding formulas, committees, commissions and staff resources.
Advocates of 'no need for reform', such as retired academic Bob Bish and some local mayors, cite these agreements as evidence of extensive co-operation between the various municipalities .
A review of these ISDs reveal the number of agreements for various functions:
Given the variety, complexity and overwhelming number of ISDs, a detailed analysis is not possible here, but the following general observations can be made.
First, there is virtually no standard model for these ISDs. Each has different memberships, voting structures and financial commitments. A confusing array of arrangements has adjacent municipalities cooperating in one ISD, but strangely at odds with related services.
For example, can anyone explain why Esquimalt and Victoria share a common police force, yet Esquimalt uses Saanich as their fire dispatch centre?
How can any councilor or resident have a remote understanding of who does what with whom and who pays for it? Every week there are dozens of meetings of staff or public officials to keep the system afloat and clearly no one is in charge. In too many instances key municipalities just 'opt out'.
Only 28 of the agreements are 'all in' to provide services via the CRD, while another 56 are 'all in but separate from the CRD'. This confirms that several municipalities go it alone and have no use for the CRD and do not use their administrative framework.
Many agreements have laudable objectives, such as 'mutual aid' to neighbours. Others are simply to share information or common purchasing.
A majority of the 'mutual aid' ISDs, particularly fire protection, perpetuate a dependence on leadership, staff and facilities from Saanich and Victoria, at a cost to those taxpayers. (Note that Victoria has recently declined to renew the fire protection mutual aid agreement for this reason. As well, Victoria has withdrawn from the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association).
Several of the most important efforts at regional service delivery, such as the Greater Victoria Library Board and the Greater Victoria Transit Commission, are subject to provincial mandates, but both suffer from lack of accountability and inclusion. The Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, divested from the Federal government, is similarly unaccountable to the electorate.
Cooperative arrangements for delivery of parks and recreation programs require 23 ISDs that reflect the fact that user patterns are regional and not local. Only the Peninsula and Westshore municipalities co-operate to provide facilities reflecting this reality.
The Capital Region Emergency Service Telecommunications (CREST) system seems to be unique as the only ISD to provide a regional service to all 13 municipalities and 27 institutional partners, and operates beyond the control of any single municipality.
In contrast, the fact that several municipalities hive together in complex exclusive arrangements to form 3 separate fire dispatch centres and another 3 separate police dispatch centres is clearly not effective, nor in the public interest. If municipalities could cooperate with common 911 and CREST communications services, then why not a central emergency dispatch centre and one regional police and one fire service?
The Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) was compiled with a massive time commitment and 15 separate planning ISDs to coordinate community planning. But the RGS is subject to approval by each municipality, and it has no legal enforcement teeth. Individual municipal Official Community Plans (OCPs) can frustrate common objectives for land use planning and arterial transportation routes.
The 13 municipalities have separate rules for land use zoning, building standards, and business licensing that complicate economic growth of the region. [A 2012 brief prepared by several business groups documents the serious economic constraints of the multiplicity of jurisdictions.]
Conclusion:
Currently the governance model of soft regional districts and strong municipalities facilitated by provincial legislation results in localism to triumph over regionalism and encourages each municipal council and staff protect their municipal turf. This is not viable or successful in meeting the economic, social and environmental needs of the Greater Victoria region.
Today 79% of all travel by any means is inter-municipal as we move through the region. Services for emergency dispatch and response, fire/police, transportation, provision of arts/cultural facilities and protection of environmental matters are essential needs for all residents and can only be delivered on a regional basis.
It is evident from the documents that the use of a multitude of informal ISDs is out of control and no longer viable. Furthermore, their use ignores the much simpler arrangement for service delivery: create service delivery economies of scale and under the control of single authority.
A 2013 research paper, New Pathways to Effective Regional Government, offers the following quote:
“Local patriotism is healthy natural phenomenon unless it manifests itself as parochialism or complete insensitivity to broader regional interest. …nobody has the opportunity or responsibility to articulate regional interest.”
Here in the Greater Victoria region the plethora of ISDs to protect local delivery has reached that point.
- Jim Anderson
PART 1
Two recent documents, one from the Capital Region District (CRD) and another compiled by officials from our 13 municipalities, provide a lengthy and detailed overview of over 350 Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) agreements in the region. Advocates such as retired academic Bob Bish and some municipal mayors trumpet the existence of these “voluntary cooperative partnerships" between municipalities as evidence that the current model of local and regional governance is working well and major reform is not needed. Conversely it can be strongly argued that the system is dysfunctional, unaccountable and out of control.
In Part 1, we discuss the topic of the 155 ISD agreements administered by the CRD is discussed. Part 2 elaborates on the mix of another 201 ISDs foisted upon us by our municipal officials.
The regional district model was created by the Province in late 1960s to accomplish three things;
First, to provide services such as fire, water, recreation, planning, etc. to residents of unorganized areas, a task the CRD does well.
Second, to ensure certain functions mandated as necessary services would be provided to all communities in the region, most notably water supply, landfill and regional parks, which the CRD also does well. [Note: Sewerage treatment is an obvious exception.] However this list of 'must provide' is very limited and badly needs to be updated.
A third category allows regional districts to assume other functions that individual municipal councils have delegated to the regional district to organize and deliver. Each municipality agrees to tax its residents to fund that particular service. Municipalities also have the legal right to opt out and provide their own local services, e.g. water delivery, garbage pickup, fire, police, parks, land use planning, etc.
The third category works well in most of the over 20 regional districts spread across the Province where there is one central community that is a service centre for regional residents, such as Prince George, Cranbrook, and Vernon.
But that third model of governance fails in polycentric areas such as Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria, where there are multiple municipalities with common boundaries. In those situations, localism triumphs over regionalism. The result is a multiplicity of fire and police departments, emergency dispatch centres, conflicting building codes, small scale arts and cultural facilities, and more particularly – a region where no single elected body is in charge.
What's worse, in numerous situations smaller municipalities don’t offer the service(s) and their residents simply travel to the neighbouring municipality and thus are ‘free riders’ to the cost of providing that service. Most notably these costs are borne by urban residents for roads and new bridges, traffic congestion, policing and arts/cultural facilities that are used, but not paid for, by over half of Greater Victoria residents.
The CRD document provides a complex budget chart that details 155 ISD arrangements under the jurisdiction of the CRD Board. It is important to understand that each of these separate functions requires its own legal agreement, financial formulas, management committee and CRD staff to administer. The fundamental fact is that regional districts have no authority to impose taxes, and all such expenditures must first be approved by the various municipal councils who requested that service, then noted as a regional levy, and collected as part of municipal property taxes. The CRD budget chart provides a roadmap of what services they are requested to provide, by whom, and how costs are being allocated between residents of various parts of the region.
[Note: the CRD operating budget is $217 million, plus a capital budget of $98 million. Operating funds are generated by municipal property tax requisitions of $72 million, plus user fees of $104 – mainly from water sales to municipalities.]
A quick review reveals that 87 ISD agreements are for services to residents in the unorganized areas of Juan de Fuca, Saltspring Island, and Southern Gulf Islands.
Another 27 ISD agreements involve 2 - 7 of the small municipalities, mainly on the Westshore or Peninsula. Notably another 26 ISDs are related to sewer system management and we know how poorly that has worked!
But more concerning is that only 15 ISD agreements involve all 13 member municipalities for regional-scale service delivery.
Clearly the CRD is upside down. Despite the Regional Board composition, with 21 of its 24 members from the 13 municipalities, it spends the majority of time dealing with services to a population of less than 50,000. Very little time is devoted to managing the needs of our 300,000 urban residents
Does that make sense, considering that over 70% of all travel is inter-municipal travel? Residents reside in one place, but 'live' regionally to travel to play, work, study or shop. Seldom are airports, ferries, major shopping areas, college/university or places of employment situated in the home municipality of the majority of residents. It is clear that the organization of local government in the region does not reflect how we actually live and depend on others to provide essential services.
Academics characterize our governance situation as “heavy institutions, weak authority.”
And more particularly the charts show, by their absence from the list key service, that critical needs such as emergency services, transportation, and arts/cultural services are not deal with at the regional level. Further, the need to respond to matters that do not respect municipal boundaries, such as climate change, protection of environmental values, natural disasters, etc. are not addressed.
Continue to read Part 2, which will provide an overview of another 201 separate ISD arrangements organized and provided amongst municipalities, separate from those administered by the CRD. Horrors!
PART 2
In Part 1, the 155 Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) agreements administered by the Capital Region District (CRD) were discussed.
In Part 2 we review a revealing 22 page document compiled by officials to document the purpose and membership of an astonishing 201 voluntary agreements between the 13 municipalities. Prescribed services are delivered either by municipal staff or private contractors. Each municipality can decide if and where to participate, and whether to commit funding, staff or facilities to a common cause. And of course each of these arrangements requires unique formal agreements, membership, funding formulas, committees, commissions and staff resources.
Advocates of 'no need for reform', such as retired academic Bob Bish and some local mayors, cite these agreements as evidence of extensive co-operation between the various municipalities .
A review of these ISDs reveal the number of agreements for various functions:
- 42 agreements for policing
- 29 agreements for fire protection
- 35 agreements for engineering
- 17 agreements for finance and administration
- 17 agreements for parks and recreation
- 17 agreements for planning
- 41 agreements for other services
Given the variety, complexity and overwhelming number of ISDs, a detailed analysis is not possible here, but the following general observations can be made.
First, there is virtually no standard model for these ISDs. Each has different memberships, voting structures and financial commitments. A confusing array of arrangements has adjacent municipalities cooperating in one ISD, but strangely at odds with related services.
For example, can anyone explain why Esquimalt and Victoria share a common police force, yet Esquimalt uses Saanich as their fire dispatch centre?
How can any councilor or resident have a remote understanding of who does what with whom and who pays for it? Every week there are dozens of meetings of staff or public officials to keep the system afloat and clearly no one is in charge. In too many instances key municipalities just 'opt out'.
Only 28 of the agreements are 'all in' to provide services via the CRD, while another 56 are 'all in but separate from the CRD'. This confirms that several municipalities go it alone and have no use for the CRD and do not use their administrative framework.
Many agreements have laudable objectives, such as 'mutual aid' to neighbours. Others are simply to share information or common purchasing.
A majority of the 'mutual aid' ISDs, particularly fire protection, perpetuate a dependence on leadership, staff and facilities from Saanich and Victoria, at a cost to those taxpayers. (Note that Victoria has recently declined to renew the fire protection mutual aid agreement for this reason. As well, Victoria has withdrawn from the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association).
Several of the most important efforts at regional service delivery, such as the Greater Victoria Library Board and the Greater Victoria Transit Commission, are subject to provincial mandates, but both suffer from lack of accountability and inclusion. The Greater Victoria Harbour Authority, divested from the Federal government, is similarly unaccountable to the electorate.
Cooperative arrangements for delivery of parks and recreation programs require 23 ISDs that reflect the fact that user patterns are regional and not local. Only the Peninsula and Westshore municipalities co-operate to provide facilities reflecting this reality.
The Capital Region Emergency Service Telecommunications (CREST) system seems to be unique as the only ISD to provide a regional service to all 13 municipalities and 27 institutional partners, and operates beyond the control of any single municipality.
In contrast, the fact that several municipalities hive together in complex exclusive arrangements to form 3 separate fire dispatch centres and another 3 separate police dispatch centres is clearly not effective, nor in the public interest. If municipalities could cooperate with common 911 and CREST communications services, then why not a central emergency dispatch centre and one regional police and one fire service?
The Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) was compiled with a massive time commitment and 15 separate planning ISDs to coordinate community planning. But the RGS is subject to approval by each municipality, and it has no legal enforcement teeth. Individual municipal Official Community Plans (OCPs) can frustrate common objectives for land use planning and arterial transportation routes.
The 13 municipalities have separate rules for land use zoning, building standards, and business licensing that complicate economic growth of the region. [A 2012 brief prepared by several business groups documents the serious economic constraints of the multiplicity of jurisdictions.]
Conclusion:
Currently the governance model of soft regional districts and strong municipalities facilitated by provincial legislation results in localism to triumph over regionalism and encourages each municipal council and staff protect their municipal turf. This is not viable or successful in meeting the economic, social and environmental needs of the Greater Victoria region.
Today 79% of all travel by any means is inter-municipal as we move through the region. Services for emergency dispatch and response, fire/police, transportation, provision of arts/cultural facilities and protection of environmental matters are essential needs for all residents and can only be delivered on a regional basis.
It is evident from the documents that the use of a multitude of informal ISDs is out of control and no longer viable. Furthermore, their use ignores the much simpler arrangement for service delivery: create service delivery economies of scale and under the control of single authority.
A 2013 research paper, New Pathways to Effective Regional Government, offers the following quote:
“Local patriotism is healthy natural phenomenon unless it manifests itself as parochialism or complete insensitivity to broader regional interest. …nobody has the opportunity or responsibility to articulate regional interest.”
Here in the Greater Victoria region the plethora of ISDs to protect local delivery has reached that point.
- Jim Anderson