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Halifax’s government is on its knees looking for an answer: are we human, or are we customer?
Councillors new and old came together Thursday afternoon to set HRM’s priority outcomes for the next four years. It was a high-altitude planning session that came down to some precise word choices.
Nowhere was that more evident than in Peninsula North councillor Lindell Smith’s request to change “serving customers” in HRM’s priorities to “serving people.”
“Not all of our residents are ‘customers,’” Smith said.
Tony Mancini took exception to that. The councillor for Harbourview–Burnside–Dartmouth East said the municipality has neither “residents” nor “taxpayers.”
“The people in our communities are customers,” Mancini said. “It’s critical we start using that term.”
Jacques Dubé, Halifax’s new CAO, has already stated that a customer service approach is key to local government. It’s a political theory that loosens red tape in order to make government interactions quick and painless. It also conflates citizens with consumers; a slippery bit of neoliberal pantomime that reduces democracy to buying and selling. The councillor for Timberlea–Beechville–Clayton Park–Wedgewood made that explicit at Thursday’s meeting
“I’m so much more than a customer,” said Richard Zurawski. “It’s such a neoliberal silo.”
Zurawski’s comments seemed to confuse some members of council, who appeared to feel they were being called Liberal party members.
Mike Savage, famously Liberal, jokingly mentioned councillors Steve Streatch and David Hendsbee—both longtime Conservatives—in response to Zurawski’s comment. The mayor did, however, agree with the sentiment.
“We can give customer service to people but not just refer to them as that,” said Savage.
The mayor also wanted to amend “family, youths and seniors” in HRM’s priorities to read “all citizens” or “all inhabitants” in order to better encompass the homeless, single persons, permanent residents and everyone else living in the municipality.
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The in-depth discussions at the four hour meeting were a far cry from eight years ago, when Cole Harbour–Westphal representative Lorelei Nicoll recalled council being put in a room at the World Trade & Convention Centre with some Post-It Notes and a vision board to determine HRM’s strategic framework.
Officially HRM’s vision for the future is to enhance quality of life by fostering the growth of healthy and vibrant communities, a strong and diverse economy and a sustainable environment.
Councillor Waye Mason asked to change “fostering the growth” of vibrant communities in that statement to “supporting” those communities, in recognition that some of our communities are, in fact, already vibrant.
The Halifax South Downtown councillor also requested that HRM “foster a corporate culture that values innovation and bold ideas” at city hall. That statement was meant to free up CAO Jacques Dubé and his team to become more nimble with testing out new pilot projects. It brought some debate between Mason and councillor Tim Outhit about whether a government should spend time and money on a project when it doesn’t know if it will be successful. “That’s business,” said Mason.
“Well this is not a business,” countered Outhit.
“Yes, it is,” replied at least a couple of HRM’s managers in attendance from under their breaths.
Those employees were on hand to give presentations about their respective departments. Some information imparted to council from the various staffers included: residential garbage has decreased by 24 percent this year while recycling is up 13 percent; non-violent crime is down in HRM but violent crime is increasing; youth-at-risk programs are currently at full enrollment; high-speed data collection using a “Google Earth-type” vehicle has begun for pavement repairs; LIDAR data collection will soon begin on all HRM watersheds; library visits are up; and staff are working on strategies for how Halifax will respond to both the current opioid crisis and the upcoming legalization of marijuana.
The amended priority outcomes for the next four years will come back to Regional Council at its next meeting for final approval.
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This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2016.
This story is gibberish. It reads like the reporter is high.
Well, Ingrid, it IS a Boon story, so… draw your own conclusions.
The nonsense from Zurawski was predictable and is the first in what I predict will be 4 years of increasingly erratic behavior on his part.
The silliness on both the part of some council members and the author about the meaning of the word “customer” illustrates the challenges ahead with this bunch, very few of whom have ever held a private-sector management job. The concept is not hard if you set aside the public admin textbooks and think of real-world examples. On one extreme you have the typical do-not-care attitude shown by most government agencies and private sector monopolies or near-monopolies like Bell Aliant; at the other you have the high-priority customer approach taken by companies like Amazon, who do everything they can to make you want to do business with them over and over. It can take someone over 2 weeks to get their name changed on a phone bill, or take someone a few minutes to painlessly process a return of an Amazon purchase. Those kind of outcomes do not just happen; they are woven into the very fabric of each company. In companies with a strong customer service culture, employees are rewarded for giving great customer service and do not stick around if they cannot.
Doing that in a government is virtually impossible because reward mechanisms are constrained by legislation and by most union contracts. Managers are motivated to avoid screwing up rather than taking risks because failure cannot be justified (see Outhit’s comments in the story). You can’t easily offer meaningful rewards to a HRM worker for fixing a pothole more quickly than someone else or to a planner for processing an application in a quick and easy manner. This is why most initiatives to “cut red tape” are doomed to failure. Governments are not designed to provide customer service, as that involves initiative, interpretive skill, and risk-taking on the part of the employee. It has less to do with any kind of money/power relationship with the client and more to do with management’s relationship with the employees dealing with those clients. The bureaucracy is designed to prevent all of that. Instilling a customer service culture in government operation is an admirable goal, but one that is unlikely to ever be achieved without massive structural change.
Push come to shove, and as much as they may not wish to admit it – we are their employers but we likely would never be treated as such – as that would take respect (grudgingly or otherwise). Often, especially after elections, in many cases they think us more an irritation to them than anything else.
We’re off to a good start: debating syntax
Garbage is down 24% but recyclables only up 13%.
Where did the other 11% of matter go?
Did they break the law of conservation of mass…?