NORTHWEST TERRITORIESE
Community governments across the territory are evaluating themselves this summer as part of a report-card-like effort to gauge their performance.
The reports flow from the GNWT's Accountability Framework, which rates communities on 13 categories, including fire protection, their financial audits, whether council is making lawful decisions, whether bylaws are effective, strategic plans and emergency plans.
News/North requested copies of the 2014 reports for each community earlier this year or a summary of the results from the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) but was told because it was only the first year, results would not be provided.
Fort Simpson Mayor Sean Whelly said he recently sat down with the village's senior administrative officer to answer the survey questions. The answers went to council recently for further discussion.
"I think it's useful," Whelly said. "We do use it as a bit of a guide to focus on areas that we haven't been as diligent as we should have been."
The volunteer fire department received high marks while strategic planning needs work.
"We perhaps don't go into that as much as we could do," Whelly said. "We could be a little better about that ourselves for making our plans known rather than dealing with things on an ad hoc basis."
Hay River council was expected to consider its report Monday. This year, communities can complete their ratings through the MACA website.
Mayor Andrew Cassidy said the report was easy and fairly quick with the website but the process does add more administrative work for staff.
He said he appreciates that it's a self-assessment since a third party coming in might make staff and council defensive.
"It's a far more sensitive approach," he said.
A summary of the results for all NWT communities will be provided to the legislative assembly for politicians to gauge the performance of community governments and the MACA.
Stoplight colours were used to indicate performance. Green stands for good, yellow indicates some issues that may prompt a MACA response and red shows problems that have to be addressed.
Consequences for issues marked with the red indicator could include correspondence from the minister specifying required actions, appointment of a supervisor to oversee all community government activities, dismissal of council or appointment of an administrator to run the community government.
Eleanor Young, MACA's deputy minister, said changes in the way the department and communities interact over the past decade prompted the creation of the survey.
The New Deal in 2007 shifted a large degree of the control for things like capital planning to community governments.
"We were spending a lot of our efforts on a couple communities that were encountering difficulties," she said. "We needed some sort of tool to work with a community and see how they are doing."
The data from the 33 communities was expected to be returned to MACA by the end of July, she said.
The first year showed a lack of long-term planning and human resources planning. Another needing work in a number of communities was fire department training and support.
The issues could be relatively simple - like not having proper fire department bylaws in place.
"I would be surprised if it didn't, to be honest," Young said when asked if the annual reports will show that more spending by the GNWT to support communities is required.
Whelly said the report is something this council and future councils can use to track progress on various issues.
"We like it. I think it's helpful," he said.
