Stephen Vance, Editor
Meaford councillor Tony Bell was clearly frustrated Monday night, as he attempted to draw out of the municipal treasurer (who doubles as the top dog in the roads department) just what he is supposed to say to ratepayers who phone him to complain about the state of their roads now that the winter snow has arrived.
It was an interesting exchange to witness, particularly because Bell’s concern can be quickly addressed, but he doesn’t like the answer: if a ratepayer calls to complain that their road hasn’t been plowed, direct them to the municipal office phone number, or to the shiny new email address that has been established specifically for those that want to share their road concerns.
That’s it, that’s all, phone call is done, now hang up the phone and go back to your household chores, or whatever you were doing before you were interrupted.
Why wouldn’t Bell (or most any other councillor) like that answer? It seems simple enough – the only job councillors have is to set policy, and the rest should be hands-off to councillors. Councillors however love to at least attempt to micro-manage from time to time, sometimes out of necessity, or so they think.
Why is it that councillors always seem to want to be far more hands-on than their job description would dictate? In any other job, if you tell a person they don’t have to do something, they’ll think great, one less thing to do, I can concentrate on what I’m actually supposed to do, and they will most likely stick to their job description and be happy they aren’t expected to do any task outside their wheelhouse.
It is a challenge with every council to put this concept in the most basic of terms, so that councillors understand their boundaries. I haven’t tried this approach yet though, so here goes:
[in my best caveman voice] You, councillor. You set policy. You do nothing else.
Let’s see if that works.
Why do councillors always seem to want to micro-manage municipal staff or departments? Why does it always seem to be so difficult for councillors to understand the boundary between setting policy and doing the actual work of the municipality?
You see, it’s relatively easy to tell a councillor that if someone calls them up to complain about the fact that there is a foot of snow on their road, they should be directed to call and leave a message at the municipal office; to everyone else – staff, residents, media – the person calling is a ratepayer, but to the councillor, the person on the other end of the phone is a voter, and only voters can help re-elect a councillor come the next election, so you must bend over backwards to placate a voter lest they vote against you next time around.
A conundrum to be sure, and it is no doubt a larger conundrum the smaller the municipality.
I know it must be frustrating at times, but councillors need to stick to the job they were elected to do, and if they receive an angry phone call, they simply need t0 direct the caller to the appropriate municipal department, and let the municipal staff (you know those front-line workers that are supposed to deliver customer service) handle it from there. Perhaps tell the caller that if they don’t receive a response, or they are still unhappy after having dealt with staff, to follow up with you so that you can raise unsatisfactory service complaints with the CAO (the only employee that reports to council), but there’s no reasonable need for councillors to be phoning staffers at home to find out when the plows will arrive on the complaining voter’s street.
If a ratepayer… err, sorry, voter, were to phone to complain about the colour of the water tower, or about the public skating hours at the arena, would the good councillor feel the need to get on the horn and call a staffer at home? Or would he direct the caller to the appropriate department and then get on with his day satisfied in the knowledge that he’d done his job, and only his job?
Trust me, if staff are being bombarded with complaints on a specific issue, it won’t be long before they are begging council to change a policy in order to fix the problem. That said, if councillors, after directing residents to the appropriate departments, hear complaints of inaction, or non-response to phone or email messages, that is an appropriate time for a councillor to step in and find out why response is lacking, but aside from that, stay out of staffers’ way.
This council has mostly avoided micro-managing thus far in their term, there’s no need to start now.
