This sounds like the DBIA mess all over again.

Why can’t a city councillor get answers to some invoices? This is definately in the public’s interest. That’s why we elect City councillors.

Way to go! – I’ll throw some money into the hat to cover the costs of the ‘extensive amount of work’ they are going to have to do to provide this info….

It is a good thing that council denied this. The City will crumble if there is no trust between city council and city management. No one likes a micromanager. Yes perhaps there are special inquiries that need to be made from time to time.

However if the public asks for information like this that’s fine. Then there will be no friction between council and management. We’ll never get a new City Manager if council starts actions like this.

Can some body esplain to me what exactly does “freedom of information” really mean???

seems like every time it`s mentioned about a half a dozen new dance moves are invented…

VS ….

Freedom of information at work ….. here is the Act ….. you have the freedom to read the act to learn waht it means …. in fact you have the freedom to find it on your own ……

http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/96165_00

Purposes of this Act
2 (1) The purposes of this Act are to make public bodies more accountable to the public and to protect personal privacy by

(a) giving the public a right of access to records,

(b) giving individuals a right of access to, and a right to request correction of, personal information about themselves,

(c) specifying limited exceptions to the rights of access,

(d) preventing the unauthorized collection, use or disclosure of personal information by public bodies, and

(e) providing for an independent review of decisions made under this Act.

I would think that City Hall saw this coming …. thanks Ben

gus: “in fact you have the freedom to find it on your own ……”

Why would any of us research anything? We have you! ;-)

“The City will crumble if there is no trust between city council and city management”

Works both ways my friend.

Notwithstanding how many policies and procedures are in place to ensure that everyone works according to some standard on the one side, there are standards and procedures in place to provide not only Councillors requests for additional information but to the public as well in case of government and other organizations.

In fact, knowing that, it would be prudent for an organization to set up its database system to easily extract the information in a fashion which would retrieve information bundled into some fairly standard groupings, such as projects, procurer, departments, time periods, service/product category, vendor, etc. Easiest thing in the world to tag each line entry with fields such as those. One would be amazed how much information for more effective management can actually be extracted if data is kept in such a fashion. A municipal auditor would be very happy with that. A financial auditor would not give a hoot.

So, having watched the fiasco over such a simple request on Council on Monday, the person up front and centre bringing forward any distrust was Councillor Stolz by a long shot.

JB …. yeah …. LOL

Freedom of information IMO usually means getting the documents after paying, and waiting for weeks or months sometimes.Then they give em to you all or partially blacked out with black marker. Why do the people not do something to force this green out of office? And that stolz too. Who in their right mind would ever for that guy? Thanks Ben and Elaine for the article. Bet her majesty really loves you now for doing this.

I will go one further for those who hide behind financial auditing reports …. in my view, they do not know the full width and depth of their responsibilities especially as Councillors, Mayor, as well as City Manager, City Financial Officer and City Project Managers.

Why do I have that opinion? Because if data cannot be used in such a way that it becomes a management tool for a continuous improvement cycle, the data is there just for the record, which is simply inadequate in today’s world of finding more effective and efficient ways of doing things.

One more kick at this …… This may be another case of people not having the capacity to use the computer capacity that they have to their advantage …. I find that to be a very common failing.

What is most of the Council and City trying to hide. Too much secrecy related to the operations at City Hall.

Brian Skakum seems to be the only person on Council who stands up for the taxpayer in this City. So much for democracy.

Thanks for taking some action, Ben.

Posted by: gus on January 23 2013 8:28 AM

One more kick at this …… This may be another case of people not having the capacity to use the computer capacity that they have to their advantage …. I find that to be a very common failing.

——————–

I think it’s more an artifact of the “it’s not my job” mentality that’s been created and fostered within the public service.

Actually, I think it actually is not Soltis’ job. At least her department is not the one that can best provide the information as far as my experience goes.

Her position is more an internal service department, as is the IT department.

The way I am used to working, it is the operations departments which run the department, generate the projects and budget requests which then move up the ladder and eventually across to Council for review and approval.

It is those individuals who have to understand the utility of data as it is applied to their work monitoring and improvement.

This is where the City Manager comes in. If the person in that position essentially brokers the jobs out to his managers and has no good overview and cannot play an active part in setting efficiency and effectiveness standards and improvement goals, then the whole operation is not a team and becomes complacent with time input being more of a measure than quality output.

Notice that the conversation around Council was not about quality of service, but about time input.

I can not see why, at a click of a mouse key, they could not have produced enough information to satisfy anyone. Then, if there are still questions, they could dig a little deeper. If the “city” is not going to make use of the speed and data retrieval ability of the computer, why don’t we just go back to sticking stuff in shoe boxes.

First question that springs to mind… when did the city last have an efficient and competent City Manager? and secondly….will we ever get one?

Thanx Ben….now we see!!

Of course if there had been an “effective and efficient” system in place, there would never had been the need (?) to pee $350,000 down the drain on a BS Core Review.
Oh, what am I thinking? The core review is the justification and fall guy for the decisions to be made on the golf course, land sell-off, privatization, contracting-out, contract negotiations, etc, etc,etc. Of course we’ll just vote down that pesky core review recommendation that the size of council be reduced.

there would never had been the need (?) to pee $350,000 down the drain on a BS Core Review.
=========================================
The Fraser Institute wouild of done a Core Review for free and come up with the same results.
Thanke 250 for some support for Brian Skakun.
Cheers

Everytime I see someone or an organisation not come out with a straight answer, they either didn’t understand the question correctly or they are trying to mislead, evade or obfuscate the issue. Then I have to ask why.
What is going on down there that they seem to have to be evasive about? Isn’t government supposed to be transparent? Isn’t it supposed to be for the BEST interests of all the people? Isn’t this what we voted them in for?

I’m glad that we have Brian Skakun there on council. He asks the questions that we need answers to.

Careful Ben, you’re opening yourself up to endless verbal tongue lashings from the anti Skakun camp here.

I hope some city politicians political careers come to an end over this.

Hello Mr. Stoltz? Hello Mr. Krause? Hello Ms. Mayorette?

I hope you are reading this.

How about Mr. Hall .. “brown bag meetings”.. it could be deemed as a city council meeting is there is more than 5 councilors hanging around with a brown bag.. Shame on those who didn’t want the information for the taxpayers to see. Glad Ben took the cause..

“I hope some city politicians political careers come to an end over this”…agreed Jetstream, as well as the Haldi fiasco (a neighbourhood seriously had to SUE our local government – basically with their own money – the hall loses and they still don’t give up?), the core review fiasco, dyke fiasco…

I hope so too.

IMO, this all has to do with the fact that it was Skakun doing the asking and the Green Team was going balls to the wall to put him in his place by creating a federal case out of it, add some drama and a public verbal beating and VOILA, problem solved. Staff time, the onerous nature of the request, blah, blah, blah is all a smoke screen. They don’t like him and see him as a “non joiner”.

But it back fired and rather than being seen as “gettn’ a tough line on council” and “reining in the troublemakers”, “protecting the integrity of staff” and my favourite “saving taxpayers dollars” – the real fools were in the spotlight.

Please take council meetings offline – this bunch is making us all look like fools.

Do I not recall Ms. Green as saying that transparency was her greatest goal? Something about cutting down on the number of FOI’s being submitted to City Hall – cost of staff time, and all that. Did she not publicly share that if we have a question, just give them a call?

Of course I understand that staff cannot handle a constant barrage of citizens calling and demanding this, that and the other thing – that is why we have voted representatives!

As taxpayers, we are hoping that council members are asking the questions that need to be answered and checking the checkers when the opportunity arises, keeping themselves and everyone else honest, with managing our money.

“Please take council meetings offline – this bunch is making us all look like fools.”

Forget that! Lets sell it to a network tv station as a new reality show. Instead of “finding Bigfoot” it could be “finding the honest politician”. Or maybe we could feature the ones that follow Ms Green and call it “The Real Housewives of Prince George” :-D

I read in the National Post a chief is like a mayor and a mayor is like a chief. Can we call her Chief Green? Just askin’.

Grand Poobah

Interceptor. Maybe we could call it *Finding Bigfoot in Mouth*

It is 30 business days (i.e. leave weekends out).

Is there a way to find out how many FOIs have been requested?