Discussions

I am waiting for this group to start a committee up to see why they have to many committees. Hiring a new city manager may have been seen a no brainer by H/R but in the end he will be their boss in away. It would have been problematic.  
 
Water treatment plant. That was over priced in my opinion even if it a highly technical job.  
 
The number of consultants is reminding of Mayor Cheri's days. Maybe our city is picking up Winnipegs habits. Just read up on that PSB buildings boondoggle. Fingers are being pointed everywhere. I say it starts and ends with council.

I don't know what field of work you work in but $5 million is not very expensive for hiring a engineering firm for plant upgrades.

Not only did the city hire a head-hunting firm to recruit applicants for the City Manager, but they also paid the same firm to do the same thing for the Police Chief too. And he was promoted from within too. What are the odds that the best applicants for two of the most high profile positions in the city are from within? The Director of HR should have to explain that in public - spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to ultimately hire internally. Oh, but wait, the Director of HR answers to the City Manager.  
 
This last round of hiring is just another example of the continued poor management the city is under. If we can spend millions of dollars for consultants on everything else, perhaps our councillors can collectively demand an independent audit of the hiring practices for city managers and the required qualifications. I've heard nothing but horror stories from across city departments.

The master plan states about $45 million in upgrades. $5 million is 11% of the cost. It doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.

I dislike taxes as much as the next person, but frankly none of the costs quoted above seems unreasonable.  
 
It's also not unreasonable to hire a head hunter to fill those positions to keep it relatively transparent. It's a neutral third-party doing the recommending, you can't say that it's favouritism, etc.

Abbysmum said "I dislike taxes as much as the next person, but frankly none of the costs quoted above seems unreasonable.     It's also not unreasonable to hire a head hunter to fill those positions to keep it relatively transparent. It's a neutral third-party doing the recommending, you can't say that it's favouritism, etc. "

the chief and the city manager is decided by city council so not exactly neutral.

Consulting does seem to be a very lucrative racket. Not sure of the context, the degree of knowledge of the firm, how much work was involved, etc...  
 
If it took 5 bills for a bunch of drawings and reports, prepare for sticker shock when the price of the actual facility comes down the pipe.

I don't disagree with the comments about transparency, etc, but the police chief is hired by the local police board. Why would we need to spend tens of thousands of tax dollars for an appearance of transparency when we supposedly have that arms-length board responsible for the hiring? IMO, it seems like a wasteful redundancy at best or a weak excuse at worse... "he was the best choice. We hired a company to tell us that." If the police board believed that Chief Balcan was the best choice then say so and hire him and don't waste the money on the head-hunters.

There are a lot of armchair quarterbacks who don't seem to have done much research before they make comments.  
 
Planning multi-million dollar projects is not a simple task. The planning part of a project (be it infrastructure, IT, organizational restructuring, etc.) is the most important part. If this is not done correctly, the entire project does not go well, goes far over budget, or fails completely.  
 
As for the complaints about the city staff not doing the headhunting themselves, there are a number of points to consider. One was already mentioned, they'd be hiring their boss. There is potential for actual or perceived conflict of interest, and there is also the fact that the city's HR team doesn't specialize in national searches for senior executives. They are staffed to look after the day to day need of the city, not conduct national searches. We don't need to interview candidates from outside the province/country to find qualified bus drivers, equipment operators, etc. The local labour market has that type of labour available. As for a senior executive that has to run the city operations, or head up the police force, the local pool of qualified candidates shrinks considerably (despite how simple some believe these jobs to be). Having an experienced, specialized firm conduct these types of infrequent searches is actually a more cost effective way of conducting the search as it doesn't take away from the daily tasks of the permanent HR team (who specialize in the day to day HR functions), and it provides a wider candidate pool to evaluate. It just so happens that two local candidates were selected this time, but that has not always been the case (as with our previous city manager). I would rather they spend a little money and get the best candidate, as selecting the wrong person for the job can end up costing far more than the search process.  
 
As for expecting the police board to manage the hiring process, please take some time to learn a little more about the board. They are supposed to meet 4 times per year to talk about high level oversight, not conduct employee searches. They all have multiple other responsibilities, and they are not HR specialists.  
 
I'm glad to see discussions take place regarding city spending, they definitely aren't perfect (no one is), but I just wish that before people choose to share their opinion, they would at least make an attempt to make it an informed opinion.

I have actually been involved with recruiting high profile positions numerous times (eg. hospital boards when they existed) so I do speak with experience. And for the record, there is a big difference between a selection process and a recruitment and retention process. You come across a little too defensive and leave the impression that you may have been involved in the recent selection process that this thread is addressing. Seeing as how you suggested that we need to educate ourselves, here is some info for you.  
 
You seem to under appreciate the role of the police board. Do they only meet 4 times a year for the purpose you state? They are required to meet that often but in fact meet more often. Emergency services in Brandon are the largest users of tax dollars and the police chief actually sets the BPS budget through the board. Their role is much more than what you suggest.  
 
The local police board is legislatively mandated with the selection and employment of the police chief. That authority was removed from the municipal government when the provincial police act was rewritten and local boards were created. The intended purpose of that direction was for the very reason of creating transparency and the femoval of real or perceived favoritism or subservience. Remember the articles in the newspapers when it came out how the E St Paul council had the police chief bringing take out food to the meetings?  
 
The police chief reports to the police board and not the city manager. For hiring, termination, and discipline issues the city has to go through the police board and not deal directly with the chief. This is different than for every other department head, who reports to the city manager.  
 
The chair of the local police board, Mr. Mark Frison, does a great job and is more than qualified to lead a search for a new police chief so the question has to be asked again, why did the city pay a head-hunting firm when it is obvious that succession planning was in place? I reiterate my previous point that if the local police board thought Chief Balcan was the best candidate, name him to the position and save the taxpayers the cost of running the charade of a recruiting process.  
 
FTR, I don't care who the chief police is and I wish the new chief good luck and success. The issue is the wasting of taxpayer dollars by using a third party firm to do what we pay, and pay well, city employees for. Someone quoted in an earlier post that the director of HR makes approx $115,000 annually. Is that person not qualified to steer the police board through a selection process? There is no conflict because the police chief reports to the board, and not the city manager.

May be you could share you knowledge as to how such a fee is attained . Five million is five million a lot of money. Saying it is just 11% of the cost of the plant dosent sound like much of an excuse for a five million dollar bill. I feel this is exactly how gigantic cost over runs come about - it is only 10% - then there is another ten percent only the next one i:ncludes the last 10%

You are so right. Consultation fees of nearly $5 million dollars is so crazy and should never be allowed to be charged that way as a "percentage of the project cost". Basically, the consultant likely has showed up on site, looked at what is existing vs what is required, and does a cut and paste project to all of the other projects that they have done. It seems scandalous that services can be charged this way. There is no way that a consultant should be allowed to be paid that kind of money for drafting this type of project. It seems scandalous, and the city needs to explain what exactly they have received for such a large sum of money. In a city the size of Brandon (about 50,000 people) we can assume there are maybe 8,000-10,000 homes or businesses at most. This would mean that each home has been charged a minimum of $5,000 just for a consultant to figure out what to do with their waste water. Seems pretty scandalous to me, that is worthy of an explanation from city council. You can't just pick a random number out of the air and say it's a percentage of project costs, when the service that is being provided is likely to be not that complicated or time consuming.

JoeSixpack said "You are so right. Consultation fees of nearly $5 million dollars is so crazy and should never be allowed to be charged that way as a "percentage of the project cost". Basically, the consultant likely has showed up on site, looked at what is existing vs what is required, and does a cut and paste project to all of the other projects that they have done. It seems scandalous that services can be charged this way. There is no way that a consultant should be allowed to be paid that kind of money for drafting this type of project. It seems scandalous, and the city needs to explain what exactly they have received for such a large sum of money. In a city the size of Brandon (about 50,000 people) we can assume there are maybe 8,000-10,000 homes or businesses at most. This would mean that each home has been charged a minimum of $5,000 just for a consultant to figure out what to do with their waste water. Seems pretty scandalous to me, that is worthy of an explanation from city council. You can't just pick a random number out of the air and say it's a percentage of project costs, when the service that is being provided is likely to be not that complicated or time consuming. "

Many positions are just the same. Agents selling houses. How many are worth the tens of thousands that homeowners have to pay just for them to sell their houses. Over 100 million dollars is given to 9 individuals that tax the crap out of housing so they can budget the Brandon School Board. Higher the value of house the more you pay. Same with city taxes. Pretty fair isn't it. I have always said we should be paying a user fee instead of a percent based upon value. It is total crap the way the system works.

Fee rates are set rate. The same as a buying a house is there any differences between a $100000 and $500000 house as far as work required by lawyers and agents no but they charge the same percentage. So why the difference because that is the set rate they can charge. Doesn't mean they should but they do.

I hear what you're saying about flat rate fees. In private sector-private sector contracts, fees are set based on industry standards and what the market will bear. If I hire a real estate agent though I can attempt to negotiate a better rate or total dollar value, or I can shop around until I find the agent I'm happy with.  
 
I think the point most are trying to make here is that this is public money, the tax payer dollars, and there should be a greater effort at getting the most service for each dollar. Maybe there was here? I don't know. Was there a tendering process for the consultants? What skill set/qualifications were needed versus what was retained? To simply say that $5 million, or 11% of the project cost, seems reasonable seems like we're a little too willing to throw our limited resources into the wind.  
 
If due diligence was done and this is the best bang for our dollar, so be it and good. Perhaps all that is needed is more transparency and someone from the city willing to explain it in a public forum (not a meeting where only 20-30 people go, but that is another topic).

Fishin Guy said "    JoeSixpack said "You are so right. Consultation fees of nearly $5 million dollars is so crazy and should never be allowed to be charged that way as a "percentage of the project cost". Basically, the consultant likely has showed up on site, looked at what is existing vs what is required, and does a cut and paste project to all of the other projects that they have done. It seems scandalous that services can be charged this way. There is no way that a consultant should be allowed to be paid that kind of money for drafting this type of project. It seems scandalous, and the city needs to explain what exactly they have received for such a large sum of money. In a city the size of Brandon (about 50,000 people) we can assume there are maybe 8,000-10,000 homes or businesses at most. This would mean that each home has been charged a minimum of $5,000 just for a consultant to figure out what to do with their waste water. Seems pretty scandalous to me, that is worthy of an explanation from city council. You can't just pick a random number out of the air and say it's a percentage of project costs, when the service that is being provided is likely to be not that complicated or time consuming. " Many positions are just the same. Agents selling houses. How many are worth the tens of thousands that homeowners have to pay just for them to sell their houses. Over 100 million dollars is given to 9 individuals that tax the crap out of housing so they can budget the Brandon School Board. Higher the value of house the more you pay. Same with city taxes. Pretty fair isn't it. I have always said we should be paying a user fee instead of a percent based upon value. It is total crap the way the system works. "

For about three years, Fishin Guy, you have been frequently outlining areas where you think city council and the school board have made poor fiscal and policy decisions. Instead of simply complaining from the sidelines, how about putting your name on a ballot, working to get elected and then convincing the other councillors or trustees that you really do have all the answers ? You have about 10 months until nomination papers are available. That should be lots of time to make the necessary arrangements.  
 
Edited by standard standard h8r, 2017-12-05 13:14:27

standard standard h8r said "    Fishin Guy said "    JoeSixpack said "You are so right. Consultation fees of nearly $5 million dollars is so crazy and should never be allowed to be charged that way as a "percentage of the project cost". Basically, the consultant likely has showed up on site, looked at what is existing vs what is required, and does a cut and paste project to all of the other projects that they have done. It seems scandalous that services can be charged this way. There is no way that a consultant should be allowed to be paid that kind of money for drafting this type of project. It seems scandalous, and the city needs to explain what exactly they have received for such a large sum of money. In a city the size of Brandon (about 50,000 people) we can assume there are maybe 8,000-10,000 homes or businesses at most. This would mean that each home has been charged a minimum of $5,000 just for a consultant to figure out what to do with their waste water. Seems pretty scandalous to me, that is worthy of an explanation from city council. You can't just pick a random number out of the air and say it's a percentage of project costs, when the service that is being provided is likely to be not that complicated or time consuming. " Many positions are just the same. Agents selling houses. How many are worth the tens of thousands that homeowners have to pay just for them to sell their houses. Over 100 million dollars is given to 9 individuals that tax the crap out of housing so they can budget the Brandon School Board. Higher the value of house the more you pay. Same with city taxes. Pretty fair isn't it. I have always said we should be paying a user fee instead of a percent based upon value. It is total crap the way the system works. " For about three years, Fishin Guy, you have been frequently outlining areas where you think city council and the school board have made poor fiscal and policy decisions. Instead of simply complaining from the sidelines, how about putting your name on a ballot, working to get elected and then convincing the other councillors or trustees that you really do have all the answers ? You have about 10 months until nomination papers are available. That should be lots of time to make the necessary arrangements.     Edited by standard standard h8r, 2017-12-05 13:14:27"

I am not going to waste my time on an elected position. I am doing pretty well for myself and building my nest egg for retirement and then getting out of this province. Let me ask you this....Do you feel that the current way the school division is run good enough in your eyes? What did I figure out...the over 85% of the budget for wages numbers have gone up cost wise somewhere around the 45% in last 5 years. Are you a business owner or operator? Students increased around the 7% mark. Ask your boss what would happen if sales went up 7% but operating costs increased 45%. What do you do? Truth is there is nobody to be held accountable in elected positions. If the division says we need another 20 million this year and we are raising taxes 7% who cares right? We get mad and vote someone else in that does the same thing. I question how they get numbers and is there a way to improve them. To this day nobody can answer me. We get numbers like 17 grand to educate each student. So if student population rises by two it costs the division an extra 34 grand to educate 2 kids. An extra 100 kids, well that is another 1.7 million dollars. Makes sense right? But yet nobody can tell me what the max capacity of our school division is nor what the operating budget would be running at max capacity. That is our true per student cost.  
 
City costs. With all the new development going on why isn't that offsetting the cost of city increases? Say one garbage truck can service 1000 people for 100 grand. Currently they service say 750 or 133/person, well that should stay steady per person if another 100 move into the area but costs went up 10 grand. 110 grand over 850 is now 130 per person. Yet taxes will always go up. Maybe my math is totally screwed up since I never got my education in Manitoba. But hey I am all for someone to correct me with numbers and such. I pull division numbers right from their own website, not making stuff up. I ask the questions of how and why. But hey call me a hater.

People think it’s so easy operating a $100 million dollar business? I would suggest that you educate yourselves with the projects and spending and perhaps your perspective would change. It’s always easy to make anonymous comments from your computer screen......it’s time citizens try and understand the complexities around municipal government and stop criticizing. When you have the full picture and all the details, then share your feedback instead of throwing out silly, misguided views.

here we go again!!! Gawd forbid that anyone has an opinion on a discussion forum!  
 
Lots of shenanigans go on in the public eye. If I am an outsider and my info comes from reading the Brandon Sun and can see what goes on why can't the councillors who were sitting around the city table see the same thing? Past council I'm talking about.

HMS said "People think it’s so easy operating a $100 million dollar business? I would suggest that you educate yourselves with the projects and spending and perhaps your perspective would change. It’s always easy to make anonymous comments from your computer screen......it’s time citizens try and understand the complexities around municipal government and stop criticizing. When you have the full picture and all the details, then share your feedback instead of throwing out silly, misguided views. "

Please point me to who I should talk to then. My emails seem to go unanswered. I am not a teacher hater, police hater, fireman hater, etc. I just ask our elected officials questions and hope to get an answer. Everything else I talk about comes from City/Division reports. When the paper reports that the budget went up 1 million from last year nobody cares. But if over the last 5 years it jumped 20 million it starts to raise an eyebrow doesn't it? I would hope so.

I can look at all types of governments including both federal, provincial and city or municipal, and down to the south of us, again federal, state, county or city, and I see something that calls itself business, but resembles business in very few ways.  
First thing is business doesn''''t have the law behind them to raise prices whenever there is a sort fall in revenue, also even though governments are rated regarding their credit risk, they can continue to borrow even when not financially stable, because of the legal obligation of the tax payer to foot the bill. Governments do not need to show financial accountability because of this point. Although we have the right to cut the head off the snake once every four years, the snake never dies, which in a way means a single individual running for office, cannot effectively make changes, and even with a whole new slate of elected officials,government spending continues to increase, the only thing that seems to be altered is the amount of new debt taken on by a government.  
Government would have been broke many years ago if the principles of business actually applied to it, saddly they don''''t, which means ever increasing taxes until, well your guess is as good as mine.  
 
After my little rant I thought I should maybe get back on topic.  
For some reason, and I don't know why it is accepted, people in government, elected officials as well as business people who provide services to government, have this strange idea that since it is government related a higher price is acceptable, maybe it comes from the idea of "who cares, it's not MY money", and ouch that hurts.  
 
Edited by don brown, 2017-12-05 16:33:26

Totally boggles my mind that members of council seem to forget once they are elected that they are also taxpayers.  
Have signed nomination papers for people who vow to cut the excessive spending, yet once elected do a complete 180.  
Must be something in that rarified air that fills the council chambers that erodes all common sense.  
And by the way, for those who say if you don't like it, run for office - not so easy especially in small towns where elections are little more than popularity contests and if you're not homegrown, you don't stand much of a chance.

Back before about 2005 when the price of housing started to get stupid and had uncontrolled and unacceptable growth (to the point we find ourselves in now) the city set it's budget and the province assessed the value of each property based on the market value at that time. How this works is that the city sets an annual budget and figures out how much it will cost to operate for the year. It uses the property assessments made by the province as a tool to assess the RELATIVE value of properties within the taxable area. It then establishes and applies a MILL RATE, which is a number that is created to figure out how to tax to achieve the city budget.  
 
How it is supposed to work is that if the city expenses stay the same (which they mostly should under normal circumstances, perhaps rise with inflation) and that is coupled with a rise in overall real estate prices, then the mill rate should drop because the cost of real estate should have nothing to do with the cost of paying wages, city costs, etc. Sure there will be a slight increase, but not as it pertains to how the cost of housing was moving (which was substantial). So instead of reducing the mill-rate to offset the increased cost of housing, city council never considered this and kept the mill rate pretty much the same. This meant that with a doubling of the cost of real estate, that they doubled the income the city generated because the mill rate stayed the same, the cost of their budget should have not had jumped dramatically, but the cost of housing went through the roof. This meant that with all of the additional revenue and nobody to call them on the fact that they should have kept their budget the same, what they ended up with was a bonanza windfall of money over this decade of housing increases. And guess what? They found a way of spending it, and now that they have normalized a ballooned budget, with stuff like $5 million dollar costs for consultants, the current unaffordable situation that taxpayers find themselves in and are complaining about, is now classified as being normal.  
 
A decade of Brandon City council not understanding that a very substantial increase in housing costs should drop the mill rate, is why everybody is paying so much in taxes. That failure has caused cities to think they had a right to tax housing with no actual value being generated other than a real-estate bubble. Now, everything is unaffordable because the property tax income was a crafty way of city councils to generate money without anybody suspecting otherwise.  
 
It's a shame, because it is very difficult for this situation to ever be reversed without dismantling all the new expenses they though they could afford.  
 
Mill Rate Explained:  
 
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/millrate.asp

http://brandon.ca/taxes-assessments?highlight=WyJtaWxsIiwicmF0ZSIsIm1pbGwgcmF0ZSJd

Your first post on this thread questions the poor management of the city, your response to my post sings the praises of the police board and talks about how the hiring of the police chief is the job of the police board, not city management?  
 
I'm not by any means questioning the capabilities of the police board, I don't know all of the members well, but those I do know I hold in the highest regard. I also know that their schedules are extremely busy and the police board is far from their only commitment outside their regular "day" job, so I would challenge your statement that the board should manage the process on their own. Just because someone is a great leader, or great in one or several aspects of their lives, does not qualify them to do everything well. I would put forth the idea that they are displaying effective leadership by recognizing that they were not the ones who should be running the search process and bringing in an organization that specializes in the process to ensure they were getting the best candidate possible.  
 
I'll agree that it doesn't look as good when the outside headhunters select the two internal candidates for such senior positions so close together, but if you're not going through the entire process, then you don't know what you might be missing out on. These types of searches have been conducted in the past and resulted in hiring an external candidate.  
 
I don't have any connection to the City, other than I live here and pay my taxes too. I don't work for them, I was not involved in any of the projects or hiring processes either, you mistook my frustration with uninformed opinions for defensiveness.

& others:  
 
What would you recommend as a reasonable cost for designing this project? How would you manage this project (if it is indeed even required)?  
 
I see comments here about "too much", but I don't have an idea of what the cost should be.

Like anything else, it should be based on the amount of time and effort that goes into something. It should not be just a percentage of how costly you can design it. If the consultant's fee is 10% of the final cost, then they obviously have an interest in making it as expensive as possible.  
 
Nobody knows exactly how to answer your question because we are not the ones doing/assessing the work, but it's nonsense to think that a consultant be paid $5 million for an opinion on water treatment upgrades. This model is everything that is wrong with government and the capitalist business model.

There isn't one. We have an evolved house of cards, every part depending on every other part. It is n" by people, who come in for a few years, then leave. There is no accountability.  
 
If you think this will ever change, it will not. There are two many different stakeholder groups, pulling in too may different directions.  
 
Out of control spending? For every group that says there is, there is a competing group saying they are not spending enough. Depends on one's own political and economic bias.

Where did "opinion" come from? The scope was the management of the project. That would i:nclude the design as well as the management of the bidding process and the project construction itself.  
 
As for what the City gets for this, the consultant will be on the hook for the finished product. Period. If the upgrade doesn't work, or doesn't work to the City's specs, the consultant will be liable.  
 
As an example, the consultant (architect/engineer) that designed the strawboard plant at Elie made some mistakes in the design, which meant the plant was unviable. The consultant went bankrupt.