Municipal Core Services...

Every so often - your local government, whether in Williams Lake (2003) or Prince George (PG) (2012) decides to do a sit-down with consultants to decide if the services provided by local governments are in the local taxpayers' best interest

Tonight - PG City Council will receive a report from their Select Committee on a Core Services Review asking that the draft Terms of Reference/Work Plan be approved.  Read the Committee's report here

In the meantime - the Committee noted this:

categorizing services as legislated (required by law), core (fundamental to city operations), contractual, or discretionary services not affected by contract

The above definition is something all local governments (municipal council/regional district) should bear in mind when deciding to take over programs that Victoria/Ottawa has abandoned.  This also applies to existing services - whether or not to expand or continue.  In fact - CRD Area 'D' Director Deb Bischoff is looking into all Cariboo Regional District local gov't services that Electoral Area 'D' participates in including Central Cariboo Victim Services, Central Cariboo Recreation and Central Cariboo Cemetery as a few examples and asking residents' if they are satisfied with these services and if they desire to continue to financially participate or not... the principle being "continuous improvement"

Meanwhile - the City of Williams Lake should look at 2013 around an public engagement of all services provided by the City and look to the public and ask which ones the City should continue to provide and the ones perhaps the City should get out off.  When engaging the public in 2013 - the services provided should be categorized into Legislated, Core and Non-Legislated


Legislated - a service like Water/Sewer
Core - services like RCMP, Fire Department Recreation and Snow Removal
Non-Legislated - services like Arts/Culture, beautification, Park/Trail Management or Development

An exercise like this could show the public the true cost of services (ie - RCMP in Williams Lake consumes roughly 30% of City of WL's Operations Budget) and the public can determine which services they want to remain and which ones should be terminated

Finally - every local government, in the vein of "continuous improvement", should be always asking its' residents, before discussing initial budget targets for the forthcoming budget year, if they are satisfied with local gov't services and if they want them expanded or cut back... This could be done by way of Facebook page and also via a free online survey like Survey Monkey, the results of which could be presented to the local Regional District Finance Committee or related structure or the local municipal council prior to it giving preliminary direction to Staff to develop the upcoming municipal budget

I believe this would be a very worthwhile exercise with the public and probably would lead to better satisfaction levels with the local government

SBF