This morning City Council was voting on a motion to allow their bureaucrats to prepare a response to the Manitoba Ombudsman, after her investigation discovered that the city had not treated residents of Transcona fairly when Plessis Road was removed from the authorized Truck Routes list.
On the city agenda, this was portrayed as revising a minor Bylaw issue. It is much more.
Never mind that the city spent an extra $10 million to rebuild Plessis to meet standards, and then in effect wasted the money by removing trucks from that roadway.
The Ombudsman, Irene Hamilton, not only rebuked the city for how the change was hidden from residents on the adjacent truck route which suffers now from the unexpected increased traffic, she found that citizens cannot be expected to navigate the vaunted city website to keep track of upcoming meetings, past and future agenda's, minutes of meetings, or participate in city processes.
The following is a speech on the wider implications of the Ombudsman's Report on public consultation by the city, as presented by Marty Gold to city council:
I'd guess that 99 % of the population, are not even noticing the importance of this matter on the agenda on TRUCKING ROUTES and how they are created and de-commissioned. Basically, in the big picture, it has no impact on their lives. They are not paying attention to this matter.
But why should they? Have you councillors? HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE READ THE LETTER FROM THE OMBUDSMAN - hands up? : (ed. note: about 5 had, including Coun's. Smith, Vandal and Wyatt)
Not the letter dated May 6th 2011, I mean the first one.
Let me explain why her findings mean you are responsible for this truck route process but also for something much bigger that affects people city wide.
The report provided to you today synopsizes the Ombudsman's findings such as
"The Ombudsman further noted that, "as a result of the absence of the matter being
reflected on the agenda at the initial stage of discussion (the East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee), Day Street residents and other area residents potentially impacted by this decision may not have been aware of this situation."
• The report added, "Most members of the general public would not know the process by which this type of issue would be elevated and be able to find the corresponding agenda and minute information."
However, your administration left out the next paragraph:
"as such, members of the public were not provided with advance notice that a decision that may affect them was being discussed.
The information that had been considered in the decision making process was not clear.
There appeared to be no opportunity for residents (other than those who signed the petition) to state or present their case(s).
There appeared to be no opportunity for potentially impacted residents to challenge or dispute any information that was considered in the decision making process."
and this was the last paragraph, that was also left out of by the administration:
"It would appear that given this situation, members of the public monitoring the city website information would not be able to interpret or be aware the issue being discussed, by which committee or office in the city, and when they would have the opportunity to make presentations.
All of which seem to support (the resident's) concerns."
"The report concluded, "it would appear that there are procedural fairness issues relating to truck route by-laws and deletions or alterations to these by-laws."
This is all written in bureaucrat. I will translate to plain English.
A citizen complained.
YOU LOST.
This is a big deal.
The people were left out of the truck route process, weren't given full information, were rooked out of protesting, and were told the city followed the rules.
But the rules weren't fair and the website is in this case misleading and incomplete, and the residents of Day Street now have hundreds more trucks going down their street.
How many of you came on The Great Canadian Talk Show on Kick-FM and told our listeners, call 311 - where do the 311 operators do? they look at the city website, and tell callers, go to the website, it's all there on the website, it's eeeeasy.
But what did the Ombudsman discover?
THE WEBSITE IS UNNAVIGABLE AND BROKEN.
Why are you not bring told that in the report that is in front of you ?
Who is going to be held responsible for this failure, this obstruction to the people's rights to fair treatment, misleading them when they complained, and refusing to make sure to protect their chance to have their say.
The Ombudsman found that access to the decision making process IN ALL CASES is unnavigateable.
IF the city website doesn't crash your Firefox, it takes 5 or 6 clicks to even get to the agenda listings -- Let alone figure out where to find things.
And god forbid the information even be there- did you know the Ombudsman discovered that the original records of Plessis Road truck route discussions were missing from the website?
So who knows what else is missing from the website on other public matters.
I bet your department chiefs don't.
And why should they, they know you don't care enough to pay attention.
And you think, all you have to do here, is vote to tell someone else go fix this ?? That is YOUR job. Where is the direction? Where is the accountability?
This is a red flag for all of you. There is no questioning, this is the same story with every single major project, never mind a truck route...
Name a project on which the city delivered fair and proper public consultation:
From bike paths on Assiniboine and Sherbrook and Berry, to the Parking Authority that has no complaint department and wants to hike rates, to a costly football stadium, to an expanding Convention Centre, to rapid bus rerouting through Parker Lands that even Councillor Orlikow complains he is kept in the dark about and might get the information with an hours notice -- so what chance do his constituents or anyone, the average person, have to fight city hall ?
Heck, it's been established that one days notice in Fort Richmond to register to speak about stadium parking is acceptable. One day. And no one at City Hall answered the phone that Friday.
THE PEOPLE KNOW YOUR BUREAUCRATS DON'T CARE.
That's the dichotomy. The departments want thing streamlined and simple and with no deviations from their plans. It's like they are allergic to feedback. Yet you as politicians say, I believe in hearing from the people, we want your input.
Well, that's what you say in October.
Then when voters complain, you ask the bureaucrats, oh, is that how we do things? and they say, yaaaaaah.
Well, this is what Irene Hamilton said about how the City of Winnipeg does things:
- It is not fair.
- The average person cannot find things, interpret things, and find out when they could intervene.
- The people on Day St were left out.
- AND the Manitoba Trucking Assoc only found out after the fact.
- And The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, their input sat on a shelf for 6 years. SIX YEARS.
Yet your officials told the Ombudsman those groups had meaningful participation, so why are those homeowners on Day squawking, 'they just missed their chance that's all'.
Who among you will move an amendment to immediately take steps to bring the website up to par using the Procedural Fairness guidelines provided on page 4 by the Ombudsman? Does that really have to wait 2 or 6 months while you go to barbeques or the lake or do whatever it is councilors do on summer break? People want to speak up NOW, about lots of issues and get involved, before you return in September.
There has to be a specific direction to correct the way the city handles all public notices and consultations, a measuring of every aspect of that against this page of standards, and Council has to stop paying mere lip service to public consultation but do something.
What is it called, a value audit? The Ombudsman just gave your website one.
It flunked. Failed. Flopped.
How do you solve disrepecting the public and discouraging them in any way from participating or worse yet, by trying to keep them in the dark that the city has failed ?
You don't just farm the problem out to the administration. You take ownership. You tell the public, we goofed, help us make it better. Have average people involved as a test group as the website is revised. Tell - presumably Mr. Sheegl, what is expected and by when. And he has to be directed, via an amendment today, to provide more accessible and easy to navigate information and background on issues immediately. IN PLAIN ENGLISH and, I suppose, plain French. Approve it now.
And another amendment, ask him to take this page of guidelines, and ask everyone in the communications office and every outside consultant and the head of public works, did we meet this standard, when did we not, and what are we doing to bring our transparency and public process up to this standard.
I support the motion but as I said, these reports from the Ombudsman are a red flag.
This is not only about truck routes delisting procedures, but about all any and all public consultation involving the city website. A number of you discussed the city website and public consultation on our radio show or in mainstream media and defended it.
The Ombudsman says, you were wrong.
You can revolutionize public consultation in this city and make it meaningful and make it work, or just limp along from vaguely worded notices nobody reads to vacant open houses to public outrage to lawsuits to letters from the Ombudsman on a case by case basis.
Use this opportunity to fix public consultation now using these guidelines that require advance notice and being given information and a meaningful opportunity to state or present their case. And, by fixing the website.
That is really the message the Ombudsman was sending, but she didn't write it in plain English.
I hope you take the translation I have provided to heart.
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Coming soon: The City of Winnipeg has company in the Ombudsman's bad books. Exhibit 'B': Red River College.
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