A City Hall that Works
Having a vibrant city with festivals, activities for families downtown, beautiful new buildings, safe and welcoming public spaces, affordable housing, and a strong local economy built on a solid foundation of thriving local businesses is good for everyone. Businesses create jobs while providing a place to get that delicious Americano, a loaf of bread, a good lunch.
During my time on Council, I’ve received countless calls and heard numerous stories from people trying to start small businesses in our city – Fry’s Bread, Wheelie’s Motorcycle Café, Shatterbox Coffee, among many. All of these businesses are run by local people choosing to stay in Victoria. They employ people. And yet, each of them struggled through City Hall’s processes that took far longer than necessary to open, creating an unnecessary and expensive burden for a start-up to shoulder. This is a problem. It prohibits growth.
Similarly, building permits, home renovations, larger scale developments, and organizations building affordable housing are all an important part of the City’s economy. Yet they take unreasonably long, and the steps are often unclear and unpredictable. This leads to frustration. It also tempts people to build without a permit to avoid the red tape at City Hall. People tell me, “Next time, I’m not coming into City Hall. It takes too long and time is money when you’re hiring contractors to do the work.” This is a problem.
Reality Check
For much of the last three years, despite the City having adopted a Customer Service Action Plan, and opening both a Customer Service Centre and a new Planning and Development Centre, the situation hasn’t changed at a fundamental level. City Hall has great staff. Our staff isn’t the problem. The problem is how City Hall is organized – as a series of silos.
In the last eight months, under our new City Manager’s “one city” approach, we have finally begun to make some headway. But the reality is that a City Manager can’t change everything. What’s needed is a mayor with a vision and a plan for running City Hall as an organization that directs its resources towards the goal of making Victoria a prosperous place.
How We Make City Hall Work
To solve these problems takes strong, focused, bold leadership. Run-of-the-mill political leadership isn’t enough, focused so often on re-election rather than best practices. Victoria needs a mayor with a rich and diverse leadership background who understands complexity.
An organization like City Hall is a complex system; all the parts need to be working as a whole focused on the goal of creating local prosperity. If City Hall were run in this way, Wheelie’s, Shatterbox, Fry’s Bread and many other businesses would have been open much sooner, making them more viable from the outset. It would be less stressful to renovate your home. Development projects could be built in a more efficient way, with important decisions being made at the front end of the process. Affordable housing projects would move ahead more quickly. It would be easier for citizens to turn new ideas into action. Victoria would be more prosperous.
Leading for Positive Change
For the past 17 years, I have held a number of leadership positions in Victoria. Nearly 20 years ago, I managed UVic’s Martlet newspaper. I was Board Chair of Fernwood NRG during the revitalisation of the Cornerstone Building and the construction of affordable housing at Park Place. I was Chair of the Bread and Roses Collective, which produced the Victoria Street Newz (now The Megaphone). I helped shape and deliver the Leadership Victoria curriculum. I founded and was Executive Director of Community Micro Lending – an organization that provides mentorship and facilitates loans for small-business start-ups. For the last three years I’ve served as a City Councillor, immersing myself in the issues facing this city, both in Council Chambers and on the ground with citizens.
Working within and across many sectors, I’ve learned how to manage and lead in a way that breaks down silos and creates connections. Victoria needs a mayor who understands complexity and who can bring her diverse leadership experience to bear on the problems at City Hall.
Victoria’s next mayor also needs to understand that a mayor is more than one vote on Council. A mayor is also the CEO of the Corporation of the City of Victoria and has the responsibility to work with her senior management team to help shape how City Hall works and serves. My plan is to transform City Hall into an organization that works as a system, with all staff in all departments working together to serve our residents and businesses.
