Sonya Sharp and Communities First candidates pledge

Sonya Sharp and Communities First candidates pledge reforms to make Senior City Administration more accountable


Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the steps of City Hall. I'm joined today by a couple of my counselor colleagues, including Counselor Andre Chabot for Ward 10, Counselor Terry Wong for Ward 7, Counselor Dan McClain for Ward 13, and Cornelia Wever, who is running for Ward 9. For four years, public confidence in the City of Calgary's senior administration has declined. The city's own annual survey of Calgary residents shows that trust has been failing.

People are tired of a bureaucracy that lectures and doesn't listen. A bureaucracy that seems to be following its own agenda, rather than the agenda of Calgary residents. If Calgary voters elect me and my nine Community First colleagues to City Council, the way that work happens in that building will fundamentally change. My Community First team is committed to delivering real reforms to make senior administration accountable to Council and responsive to citizens.

City Hall belongs to the people of Calgary, and it's time it started acting like that. So, here's our plan: we will introduce a sunshine list for all city employees earning more than $130,000 per year. Taxpayers deserve to know where their money is being spent. We will commission an independent third-party audit of the city's pension programs, and we will make those results public.

We will also call for consolidating the Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Operations Officer positions, restoring the City Manager title, and saving taxpayers at least $2.5 million every year. One of our biggest frustrations that we hear from Calgary residents is the lack of oversight and transparency where our senior administration is concerned. Community First will start fixing that through changes like making every administrative expense publicly disclosed and reviewed quarterly by Council's Executive Committee.

That is accountability and action. City administrators and senior city administration have forgotten their role. They're acting more like a big corporation, but they're not; they're a local government, and they must answer to Calgary residents and Council. That is why we will restore the full performance report, which is an accountability report that was quietly got rid of this year.

With that, we will once again track and report the full set of performance measures, with results presented to Council every quarter. No more hiding results from the public. And I want to be clear on my next point: Calgary residents have serious concerns about the city's pension practices. Even when Council asks for information, the answers we're getting are vague or complicated.

That is why I will ensure there is a third-party audit. The public deserves the truth about pensions, and under my leadership, they will get it. If these changes sound like a good step in the right direction to you, the only way to make this happen is with a Community First Council and a Community First Mayor working together.

It takes eight votes to get things done at City Hall. With your support, we have a team with the mandate to finally restore accountability, transparency, and make City Hall work for the people of Calgary again. Now, one of those votes is our expert in procedure, list, and experience, Counselor Andre Chabot, who is running with Community First in Ward 10. I would like to invite him to the podium now to say a few words.

Counselor Chabot: Well, I'm thinking, as was mentioned, that money voters, Chabot, and I'm proud to be running in Ward 10 again as part of the Community First team. For the past four years, Community First counselors have been calling for accountability and transparency, but without the votes, the status quo has prevented us from moving forward with real change.

That's why this election matters so much. As an example, when members of Council want to bring forward a motion, it must first go through administration for technical review before it ever makes it to Council. For those of you who are unfamiliar with our procedure, a motion is the mechanism by which members of Council bring forward direction to administration to take action on issues that have been raised by constituents.

That's something that representatives should not have to get permission from administration to bring forward issues identified by residents. It's just one example of the many things that we're trying to fight against, and that's why we're here today. For the first time, Calgarians have the chance to elect a Community First Council and a Community First Mayor together, which is the only way that we can actually affect positive change.

That's why we're here today, and hopefully, you will consider supporting us. Thank you.

Now, I will welcome questions from the media.

Media: Yeah, I know that scale. Can you speak to how many positions would be affected by consolidating the CAO and COO positions?

Well, I wouldn't speak to the number of positions that would be affected. That would be a conversation to have with the current CAO and how to make that work. The $2.5 million comes from the operating budget that we saw in the budget last year for the COO office, and to be clear, this isn't a pledge to cut people out of their positions in these departments. This is to kind of go back to the way things were before.

It's been a number that has been used provincially, and we're not asking for names to be tied to those positions right now. What you see in the sunshine list is a pay scale, so we're looking at $130,000 based on even what other provinces have done. That is really important, but also, again, just to reiterate, there are no names attached to that list. That would be positions, not individuals.

Media: Can you speak to the third-party audit of the city's pension programs? What are you hoping to achieve with that?

Well, I think what's important in the pledge is to recognize an audit of what's currently there. As members of Council, we get a lot of questions regarding our own pension and what that looks like. If we can take a pension, or if we can't take a pension, there's misinformation saying that counselors get a golden pension, which is not a fact.

The one thing about the city pension is that it's really hard to understand. Most municipalities, even in British Columbia, have one pension, but at the City of Calgary, there are like three different types of pensions. So, what we really want to do with an audit of what's there is to explain to people what a pension the City of Calgary offers, and that is up to individuals to decide if a public pension or private pension would be better for them.

It's really just bringing things to light. There is so much misinformation going on, especially during this campaign, and trying to get some of these answers, even from administration, has been difficult. That's why we really gotta make sure that the conversation around pensions is clear, because it is important for taxpayers to understand that.

Media: Can you speak to the technical review process and how that affects Council's ability to bring forward motions?

Typically, what happens to the technical review process is that we submit it to administration, and there are times when it gets delayed to a point where it won't make the next Executive Committee meeting. So, in some of those instances, we bring it forward as urgent business, or it misses that meeting and then gets brought up at the next meeting.

When we try pushing through without administration's recommendations, they will often recommend against, and some of those motions actually die on the floor before ever making it to Council. I know of at least two instances personally where my motions never even made it to Council because administration didn't record or prefer their support for the most part.

One of my motions was to look at options for a sanctioned location for people to race vehicles, and another one was to look at agencies and our planning process before we even hit the rezoning public hearing. That actually failed at committee, which I then reintroduced, and Council is the only body that can fail a motion. Administration was very much against that, and it's just one example of the many things that we're trying to fight against.

Media: How does this plan address the issue of transparency and accountability in City Hall?

Well, what we're asking for is senior administration to disclose their expenses. It's very vague in the budget. You see the budget preview coming in a couple of days, and it's usually just a line item that you'll see in there. What we want to say is that quarterly, what are you spending your money on? It's just finding those efficiencies in the corporation, so that we can see if this is something that we should be spending our money on right now.

Travel expenses, and things like that, are important to be transparent about. Our budgets are line items, and you can see how much money has been spent on things like phone chargers or taking constituents out for coffee or lunch. We have to have their names on that list. Council should see those expenses, at least for senior administration, to understand what's being spent and what everyone should be accountable for. We're governing the public purse, and we have to be accountable for our spending.

Media: Thank you.

That concludes our press conference for today. Thank you to Counselor Chabot and the Community First team for joining me. We look forward to your support in the upcoming election. Together, we can make a difference and restore accountability and transparency to City Hall.