Kamloops Voters Society’s shiny new budget idea

City council members got an email the other day, one I doubt they were smiling about as they read it.

The source was Chris Ortner, president of the Kamloops Voters Society. It began, as Ortner’s emails now typically do, by stating the purposes of the society — greater transparency in local government, non-partisan public voice, etc.

Then he got to the point: his group wants more say in the City budget. The current process isn’t good enough.

He initially directed the email to finance director Sally Edwards, who tossed it back at him like a hot potato and suggested it was a matter for council.

In Ortner’s, and the KVS’s, view, there isn’t enough opportunity for the public to understand the annual budget document, nor to influence it.

He noted that the yearly public budget meeting includes a PowerPoint presentation by Edwards, which he gave a passing grade. But it was too much information in too short a time.

Instead, the KVS would like a whole bunch of meetings.

“We would like to start with the Financial Plan 2011 – 2015, so that people can gain a general understanding of departments, personnel, and their duties and requirements,” Ortner proposed.

“We would like to then move to some interactive sessions regarding the 2012 budget, involving department managers and Kamloops Voters, over the course of the Fall months.”

Then: “Our objective is to be able to say that the City of Kamloops and the Kamloops Voters Society have together enabled a very high level of citizen engagement in the budgeting process.”

Ouch. Translation: “Council needs help and we, the KVS, are the ones to get you on the right track.”

Aside from the annoyance factor, there are other things about the Ortner-KVS plan that are problematic.

For one, you can dress up a budget meeting but it’s still a budget meeting and nobody is much interested. The budget document is thicker than a Quarter Pounder. Not even council members go through it, relying instead on highlights from staff.

Since hardly anybody shows up at the one meeting, it seems unlikely more meetings are going to change anything.

Still, Orter and the KVS have a point to make: public engagement hasn’t been a strength of this council. Parkade woes aside, council has made no significant effort to pro-actively consult.

It has not, for example, scheduled town hall meetings in communities around the city. Such meetings are a highly effective way to get a sense of hyper-local issues.

Neither has council done much to foster community citizens associations, which are hard to sustain but are worth their weight in gold when active.

Ortner’s vision of “participatory budgeting” is modeled after one brought in by first-year Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi. The process uses both social media and town hall meetings.

It costs, by the way, $1.3 million.

But here’s a key point about the Calgary model: before putting it in play, the council first asked the public what kind of a process it wants.

There’s room for improvement in the way Kamloops City council gets input on the budget, but if a new process is going to work, it’s got to be one the public buys into.