Before shifting control of health and social services to the municipal level, ratepayers should demand the health of city administration be tended to first.

Creating a community committee to oversee the transfer of responsibility for health and social services from the territorial government is a step in the right direction, but is the city ready to take on this important task at this time?

City hall has been hit by a major turnover in senior personnel, which is not all bad but creates problems until the new hires are up to speed.

And while the committee's chair, Ruth Spence, who served three terms on city council and spent 16 years running the YWCA, is well qualified, does she have the staff to conduct the kind of detailed cost analysis required to ferret out all the hidden costs of training, recruitment and administration with which the territorial government may not be forthcoming?

Spence's panel, which includes Lanny Cooke of the Association of Community Living; Carolyn Mandrusiak, acting CEO for the Department of Health and Social Services; along with the YWCA's Lyda Fuller and the Dene Nation's Patty Jocko, offers a cross-section from the community. But they will need considerable help from the city's administration to understand all the issues.

For a good example of how things can go wrong, Yellowknifers need look no further than the current health-care crisis in the Keewatin, where downloading, cost-cutting and lack of experience has left health care in a shambles.

One thing is for sure. As the city grapples with lost jobs and an uncertain economic future, we can't afford to take on new responsibilities that are less than fully funded for all contingencies now and in the future.

Last week's update on the city's recycling program turned up the worrying notion that some people still think recycling is a dead end in Yellowknife. It's not. Newsprint, glass and stainless-steel cans are being diverted from the waste stream.

The fact that many residents are not up to speed on what the city is able to do with those materials -- if only people would co-operate by using the recycling bins -- suggests city hall needs to get more aggressive in getting the word out.

Setting up the hardware to recycle or at least prepare to recycle what otherwise would fill up our dump is only half the job. We need the attitude and the software, if you will, to get into the habit.

The challenge of sheltering the homeless is a growing problem in Yellowknife. A Back Bay shack currently housing several otherwise homeless people is a disaster waiting to happen.

The Salvation Army is doing its best, but their resources have been pushed to the limit. Jail is not a wise nor acceptable alternative to temporary housing. And we can't let people freeze on the streets.

More temporary housing is needed. Nothing grand, nothing profitable, just somewhere warm where society's dispossessed can find shelter. The Front Door Society's initiative is, at the very least, practical. For that it merits the community's full support.