Fredericton City Council used a sneaky and underhanded trick to deliver a cut in transit service to the Silverwood area. They snuck it in as a line item in their 2011 budget. This is probably why they didn’t release the budget documents until after the vote. The only way anyone could have found out about it was to have attended the “open” budget meetings. Even that would have been questionable as it may not have been mentioned at those meetings.

Even the transit commission was caught off guard, when asked about it, they replied with this:

Good day, it has not been finalized due to some confusion on councils
part, now would be the time to call your councillor and be very vocal
about not making any cuts to service. Call 460-2127 City Clerk’s Office
to find out who your councillor is and his number. Good luck

Everyone can appreciate that some runs may not have enough ridership to warrant service. This was the case with the Two Nations Crossing route. The big difference with that one was that the cut was pre-announced and fully debated in council.

Most of the budget debate has been about a statue. Not having a statue repaired may annoy some people, but it doesn’t affect peoples lives in the way that a transit cut would. People don’t rely on a statue to get to and from work. People don’t move to a neighbourhood based on the availability of a statue. People won’t have to buy a car if they suddenly lose access to a statue. Transit matters to a lot of people. It’s time that the City of Fredericton starts taking it seriously.

Update: 11:55am: Article edited to clarify the fact that the cuts are only for the Silverwood area.

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So how was Fredericton’s 2011 budget more open and transparent than the 2010 budget?

They pre-released details of the water & sewer portion of the budget. That’s it. That’s the big difference.

If you look at the minutes of the 2010 budget from last year, you’ll see a very detailed presentation that included line items for each department. Why couldn’t they release this before the vote for 2011?

If city council wants to be open and accountable, they actually need to be open and accountable. Fredericton’s city council has a major perception problem where people believe that it built up a giant wall so they can hide the incompetence of city employees. Whether this is actually true or not, is irrelevant because perception often matters more than truth.

Maybe they’ll get it right next year? It will be an election year after all. (no, I’m not running in 2012, stop asking). It’s time to get serious about openness and transparency

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Too often the car-haters treat the cul-de-sac as the enemy of good urban design. They aren’t the most efficient for driving, and they do cost a little more to plow in the winter, however, with proper planning, they can be better for walkability (and bikeability). All it takes is a path that connects the dead end to the road running behind it.

We’ll take this example in Fredericton’s Lincoln Heights:

Doesn’t look very walkable, does it? How about we add the interconnecting paths (that actually exist) to the map:

This provides a nice balance. You can easily walk or bike around the neighbourhood and many of the residential streets have low and slower-moving traffic. Planning doesn’t have to be about punishing car owners, you can compromise and still have a great neighbourhood to live in.

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For the 2011 budget, Fredericton City Hall has promised to be more transparent. While we wait for the bulk of the budget to be released, they gave us a tease by publishing a somewhat vague PowerPoint presentation about the water and sewer system. Although this transparency is a start, it doesn’t provide the level of details or engagement that people are beginning to expect. The only avenue for feedback is the link to the list of mayor and councilor addresses.

To test this engagement, I came up with the following questions and sent them to the entire council:

1. Why does the City of Fredericton have a water & sewer commission as well as the FAPCC? Is there much overhead in having these two commissions?
2. The presentation states that there is a $119M infrastructure deficit, yet there will only be $1.8M spent next year in renewal. That’s only 1.5%, which at that rate would take us 66 years to catch up (assuming deficit doesn’t grow). Why are we not being more aggressive in renewing the infrastructure?
3. The annual water and sewer bill for a family of 4 is quoted as being $580/year. I have asked a number of friends and acquaintances what their water bill was like and none of them paid more than $450. Where did that $580 come from? It seems to be inflated and I am concerned that it would be skewing the calculations for rate increases.
4. As the global trend is to encourage water conservation, why is the service fee being increased? Why not raise the usage based rates instead?

E-mail was sent at 9pm on Tues Nov 30. Within 2 hours, I got personal acknowledgements from Mayor Woodside and Councillor Mike O’Brien (who are the same ones who engage on Twitter). They didn’t answer the questions, but both promised that answers would be forthcoming.

At 9:45am the next morning, I got an e-mail from Councillor Steve Hicks that had answers to my questions. In summary:

1. It works well with two commissions, however, they could and probably should be merged
2. Renewal funds come from other sources as well, like gas tax revenue. Council is aware that this has the potential to be a big problem.
3. The $580 is a “standard usage volume” that is typical across Canada and is only used to compare with other cities. It is not used to calculate revenue projections.
4. Consumption is actually decreasing, having too much emphasis on consumption would starve the city of revenue.

While the level of engagement works, more could be done. Rather than be forced to e-mail every council member, there should be an online forum where questions and suggestions can be handled by a “point person” who will be able to answer authoritatively. This would also have the benefit of the responses being visible to the public, which would avoid having the same questions asked again and again.

They still have a way to go, but this process is a vast improvement over the past where City Hall was behind a giant wall. We’re also unlikely to see any explicit detail on some of the most expensive parts of the operation, the “general and administrative” costs. This would essentially disclose salary levels of employees and probably violate privacy laws.

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