Redditor u/Alikhan5533 posed a question, admittedly directed at someone else.
How will you repair the broken trust between residents and council?
Will you establish an Independent Auditor General for the City of Brampton?
New faces replacing old faces with the same system in place will bring the same results.
We need accountability. What is your plan for that?
I responded:
If you had asked me those questions, here is how I would answer them.
I’ll try, certainly to address the trust issue. The rumour mill of corrupt practices; the prevailing wisdom that ‘one call to the right guy can get this fixed’ and the consensus that ‘the right money in the right hands gets it done’ may not have any hard evidence, but council needs to protect the City’s reputation and treat all of it as the source of real reputational damage that decreases competition in public procurement and participation in all RFP processes; this drives up costs city wide and costs taxpayers real money. The public is right to have lost trust, as the City ignoring directives from the Ombudsman to complete audits sends the message “You are right to be paranoid. We can not, in fact, be controlled. We will not, in fact, be transparent and accountable.”
Yes, I will hire one. In addition, the employee whistleblower hotline will ring the independent Auditor General, not the CAO’s office (the Mayor’s hand picked CAO, as it happens). Both the Auditor General and Integrity Commissioner will be hired through open RFP processes, not hand picked friends of mine who will cover my behind and keep my slate loyal, protecting them from scrutiny and consequences. The days of the Mayor using their Strong Powers to create the appearance of untouchability have to be over.
My new face has been in business in Brampton for 23 years. I will not abide the status quo, and will use Strong Mayor Powers to implement the systems we need to drive transparency and accountability. I will build a system that requires no trust from you, as the system will be open and transparent and enable anyone to directly verify data, analytics, trends and progress.
For example, if my By Law Enforcement system identifies a Hot Spot, that Hot Spot will be on the Dashboard, with data as to complaints, investigations, number of Work Orders/Fines issued, processing times for prosecutions, etc. If a Hot Spot has 30 “Rectify Orders” issued, then on Day 31, you will see that data move to the next colomn of “complied” or “prosecution initiated”. And if there is a column building up, eg: 30 investigations climbs to 60, climbs to 90 and no increase in the next column (action taken), then council and the taxpayer will both see that data in real time, and everyone will know that something is a chokepoint in the system. Resources can then be deployed to analyze and address it. This type of system is an illustration of my plans for accountability.
The use of Public Dashboards and Regular Public Reports (Annual for Integrity Commissioner and Auditor General, quarterly for any public procurement projects and major infrastructure projects) will let the public effectively delegate to council on projects in their area. A project like Williams Parkway will move from delegations of “this is taking too long” to “You accepted the tender on Date X, Work started on Day Y, the deadline was Day Z, it is now Day Z plus 30” and the public and council alike will have that actual data. Council can then be prepared with actual answers. Supplier delays are real, material defects are real. What does no one any good is council issuing a collective statement of “Yes, we are also frustrated, we’ll work on that, goodbye.”
Transparency and Accountability are not about blame. They are about empowering people to take responsibility to address issues. Gatekeeping information is a short term gain, with no long term benefit. Its time to make a change, and build a city that works for you.