What should be done about the PG Core Review?
Monday, March 26, 2012 @ 3:42 AM
By Peter Ewart
Generally speaking, there is nothing wrong with a municipality conducting a Core Review to eliminate waste, boost efficiencies, improve or add service delivery to citizens, and so on. However, the City of Prince George Core Review has been plagued by problems, seemingly self-inflicted, in large part, by Mayor Green as chair of the Committee that is overseeing it.
To start with, Mayor Green pushed for Council to eliminate 28 municipal jobs (9 filled, 19 vacant), even before the Core Review had begun. This was an ill-thought out move, especially since, as Janet Bigelow, president of CUPE Local 1048 pointed out, some of the people laid-off had been involved in securing millions of dollars of grants for the municipality.
Then, out of all the hundreds of businesses to choose from in Prince George, the Mayor appointed a representative of KPMG – which is an international consulting company that conducts Core Reviews – to her Select Committee on Business. This Committee developed a number of recommendations that, on the Mayor’s initiative, were combined into the work of the Core Review. Did all of this create an impression among other bidders that KPMG was already a part of the process and that the Core Review contract was a “done deal”?
Another way to put it – were other bidders spooked? We don’t know, but we do know that not one other consulting company put in a bid on this lucrative $350,000 contract. And yet there are a number of different consulting firms that travel around the province doing precisely this kind of Core Review work, such as in Penticton ($37,904 contract), Osoyoos ($40,000), Summerland ($40,000), and White Rock ($60,000). Given that the contract with the City of Prince George was many times larger than any of these (i.e. $350,000), why were there no other bidders except KPMG? After all, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a prominent consulting firm, just completed an “Economic development service review” for the City last Fall (on IPG). In addition, the Helios Group and MMK Consulting have done Core Review work for the other BC cities mentioned above.
And then there was the issue of the City Manager proposing publicly in January that $350,000 be set aside in a contingency fund for the Core Review contract. Councillor Frank Everitt criticized this action at the Jan. 12th Council meeting, saying prophetically that, as a result of releasing the number, “Mr. Consultant will already know [what figure] he has to come in at.” Indeed, the sole bid, which was submitted by KPMG afterwards, has just been revealed to be about $350,000 (includes a 5% admin fee and 12% HST).
Another problem was the poor research that was conducted regarding Core Reviews in other cities. The Prince George City Manager claimed that his research suggested that the range of cost for Core Reviews done elsewhere was “between $100,000 and $1 million.” As noted above, this was clearly not the case with a number of cities conducting Core Reviews in BC at a much lower cost than $100,000. Toronto’s Core Review, a city 33 times larger than Prince George, came in the same as PG’s, i.e. $350,000.
Given all of this, perhaps a re-think (and, at the very least, a reposting of the RFP) is warranted, which would mean Council not approving the KPMG proposal – at least not at this time. Interestingly, the Prince George Free Press has written an editorial (March 23) also criticizing the cost of the proposed Core Review in PG. It notes that Williams Lake a few years ago conducted its own Review internally, using city staff. In that regard, Port Coquitlam, more recently, has also undertaken an internal Review.
Why don’t the Mayor and City Council consider this option? Rather than flying in high-priced, big city consultants from Toronto and Vancouver, why not set up an internal Review mechanism within the civic government that can be used on an ongoing basis to improve efficiencies and service delivery? As the PG Free Press editorial points out: “Core service reviews are an important part of every organization – public and private – and should be conducted regularly. Sadly, organizations don’t do them nearly as often as they should.”
One of the criticisms of external, private consulting firms like KPMG is that they take a “cookie cutter” approach to Core Reviews, and they often have close connections to private companies and multinationals that would like nothing better than for municipal services to be privatized and outsourced. This can lead to unnecessary layoffs, reduced service delivery and a divisive and combative civic politics.
Just look at the gong show that civic politics have descended to in Toronto. Since KPMG did its Core Review there (advocating massive service cuts, layoffs and outsourcing), City Council meetings have often been reduced to a screaming mayor, a dysfunctional council, and an enraged citizenry.
Do we want to go down the same path using an external consultant? Or do we want to build an internal mechanism embedded in our civic government that can work to achieve efficiencies and improve service delivery on an ongoing basis?
At the January 12th Council meeting, Councillor Brian Skakun asked whether or not capital projects, like the RCMP building and the Canada Winter Games, would be reviewed in the Core Review. He pointed out that a big part of the reason Council is facing a challenging fiscal situation were all the costs associated with these big ticket items. These expenditures have been mounting over the last few years, while core services, like roads and sewers, have been deteriorating.
That is precisely why it makes a lot of sense to have an embedded, internal Review mechanism in the City government of Prince George – one that is permanent and can conduct core reviews of the City’s whole operations and / or individual parts, as needed. After KPMG completes its report, its consultants will fly back to Toronto and Vancouver, perhaps never to return again. What is to stop City Council and the City administration from falling back into old habits and plunging into deeper debt on big capital projects?
After a while, a core review report will end up sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust with all the other old and forgotten reports. But an internal Review mechanism, composed of living, breathing civic employees, who reside and work in Prince George, could live on, providing value for taxpayers, improved service efficiencies, and a check on unnecessary spending.
Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca
Comments
“an internal Review mechanism, composed of living, breathing civic employees”
…..blind to the inefficient practices in place.
That is why an independent third party is brought in to review practices and procedures in place. If a civic employee saw an area that was obviously overstaffed, do you think there would be repercussions if they brought it up? Would they be ostracized by the brothers and sisters?
Poor practices tend to fade into the background when they are done on a daily basis but can stick out like a sore thumb to an independent observer.
The internal review can collect dust more easily than one that the city paid good money for,I could make a list of examples a mile long. Once the core review final report is released, the taxpayers will demand some of the recommendations are acted upon.
Brian for mayor!
” But an internal Review mechanism, composed of living, breathing civic employees, who reside and work in Prince George, could live on, providing value for taxpayers, improved service efficiencies, and a check on unnecessary spending.”
I had to laugh at these lines as well. Yeah, civic employees are the model of efficiency.
This city needs to reduce the number of employees and start contracting out some of its services.
“some of the people laid-off had been involved in securing millions of dollars of grants for the municipality”
+
” plunging into deeper debt on big capital projects?”
= DEBT !
See the connection?
“One of the criticisms of external, private consulting firms like KPMG is that they take a âcookie cutterâ approach to Core Reviews”
In most industries it is called a standard of practice (SOP). Every single profession I know has those.
The thing is with Service Reviews the standard has not quite been established by smaller firms.
I would prefer having a doctor who has practiced at St. Paul’s in Vancouver for 15 years with a 97% success rate on an operation I need than a doctor from Kitimat who has observed the operation twice and would be performing his first such operation.
As far as the numbers of bidders go, I agree with the author 100%. I have recently posted what I would consider to be a practice standard and even a best practices standard for getting as many bidders out as possible.
I do not know whether the City has done that or something similar to it.
It would be very easy for Councillors to ask to see the records of the process, phone calls made and results, etc. to see for themselves whether all reasonable efforts were taken.
Regardless of who does the review, clearly this particular core review bid process was flawed from the beginning and should be put back to tender with less interference from the so-called “select committee for business”. This is so clearly a setup to get a particular company, which is very pro PPP, to do the review, and I think it is pretty clear what the outcome will be. Which will be to privatize everything from snowplowing to pothole repair, which, again, isn’t necessarily a bad thing EXCEPT it will be run by foreign multinational corps who are in the business of running municipal services. Keep the contracts to local companies and at least the laid off people from the city have a chance to go to work for a contractor. If the multinationals get thier hands on our services, you can expect water meters in the not so distant future, and with that, will come bids for the prince george watershed waterrights, and pretty soon every citizen of PG will be beholden to some foreign gov’t everytime you turn on your tap if you are on city water.
BTW, the Penticton CSR was, in my opinion and that of others much closer to the situation than I am as an outside observer, a politically motivated Review. It’s sole purpose was to lay people off.
PG, on the other hand did that without a CSR. A CSR really is not needed for that purpose. It has been going on in various organizations before CSRs became the vogue.
BTW, Penticton is continuing with its services reviews …. So, do not think that an intial CSR is the end of it. It was not in the case of Toronto, it is not in the case of Penticton, and it will likely not be the case with PG.
PENTICTON FIRE DEPARTMENT SERVICES REVIEW
Closing Date: 2:00 p.m. local time on Tuesday, April 24, 2012
http://www.penticton.ca/assets/Business/2012-RFP-03-Fire%20Department%20Services%20Review.pdf
The fire deapartment is most certainly a core service of any city.
Here is the scope:
The Scope of Work is intended to define the work activities as accurately as possible. The review of the PFDâs operations and service delivery is to identify areas for potential service improvements and cost saving opportunities. The City is looking to optimize the delivery of internal services to reduce duplication, enhance services where appropriate, strengthen internal controls, and facilitate service level monitoring and analysis.
This is a Service Efficiency Evaluation. Yoou know, those are the types of select evaluations Toronto conducted to bring that $350,000 up to a cool $3million and the process needs additional ones done as far as I can tell.
As I keep writing, our proposal, as it went to Council, calls for that type of efficiency review. Not sure how many departments. I would need to see the RFP for that.
But, in the interest of non-tranparency, it does not seem to be available anywhere on the net. ;-)
“you can expect water meters in the not so distant future” … I was under the impression that new houses have to have them. Am I wrong?
They will be coming, local, national, international, extraterrestial, who knows, but they will be coming and you will be able to see where the rich people live just by flying over the city and looking at the colour of the yards in August.
But
The end product of the review will be a report with some recommendations of how the city can move forward. Actions can range from nothing to full implementation, it’s up to council and administration to decide.
The report might find that chin rests on shovels are a good thing :-P
Did anyone ask the other qualified bidders why they didn’t bother putting in a bid? It would be interesting to know if the criteria tied the hands of a lot of the possible bidders.
“”you can expect water meters in the not so distant future” … I was under the impression that new houses have to have them. Am I wrong? ” .. then it’s only a matter of time when everyone will have to have them. Putting them on new homes is just acknowledging at some time in the future water will be metered. The question is, do you want to pay your water bill to the city of PG or to a multinational from who knows where?
http://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/news/137694913.html
Penticton Fire Department. $60,000 is budgeted for the review. The budget figure, as normal, is published.
Interestingly it may be handled better than the CSR last year. It got some negative press. Don’t know if this is the tone in all press coverage.
from the article: “Chief Wayne Williams said, âWe are really looking forward to getting this done,â he said. âMost fire departments in the province that operate like we do, as a composite fire department, have master plans in place. It talks about how they respond to things, what they respond to, what else they should respond to, what shouldnât they respond to. They look at response times, fire hall location.
âThey come in and tell you how youâre doing and provide recommendations on how you can improve your service.â
“While Williams has wanted to conduct a review of fire operations for several years, it was always listed as a medium priority in comparison to other department requests.”
Those who can: DO
Those who can’t: TEACH
Those who can’t do or teach: CONSULT
“Those who can’t do or teach: CONSULT” or join CUPE
“Those who can: DO”
If that were only true, many of our problems would be solved …. ;-)
Those who can: DO
Until they get injured on the job…… then
Those who can’t: TEACH
Until the demand for new grads drops …..
then
Those who can’t do or teach: CONSULT
;-)
I personally think a locally run core review would be the way to go. This way foremen would be more able to be cautioned about excessive expenditures and reminded of their budgets. I wouldn’t listen to the zealots who claim lazy work practices exist as they are likely the lazy ones.
I would avoid KPMG like the pleague as they encourage 3P’s (Private Personal Partenerships and that means multinationals would be regulating our water and maintainance would come from our pockets. Just see how the water and sewer system was affected in Paris France when they hired KPMG to care for their water system.
Whatever happened to the (business) principle of “plugging the leaks” in the local economy? $350K is a large chunk of change to be leaving the community, and the Province.
Perhaps other expressions of interest would have been received if the work was parceled in a less omnibus fashion. Added benefits might include importing and developing local talent, more children in local schools, local sales of goods and services, not to mention the tax revenues returned to the system.
Smaller contracts might also encourage the review activity to extend in time, leveling out the economic spinoffs.
3P’s Private Personal Partenerships, eh??? …. hmmm …
We collectivly voted in this council. If this how they want to proceed on the review, so be it. Move on Ewart. I frankly could care a less what Ewart and cupe thinks of this process.
These big bad multinational companies are Privately trying to Purge Personnel ergo 3P’s
Hey, do you specialize in bake sales, John Grogan?
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“Perhaps other expressions of interest would have been received if the work was parceled in a less omnibus fashion”
Read the RFP. I linked it now that it is available in the Council Agenda package for tonight. The language is such that it allows sub-consultants.
By not providing the whole work, it is not much different than building construction, the City would become the project manager and would be stuck with a ton of work to make sure that all the pieces fit without gaps. If there are gaps, it is typically the project manager’s fault, or at least partially so. Very risky way of doing business.
The collective is where Peter lives.
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