Victoria city council is on a mission to act on all 30 recommendations from a recent review looking at city governance and transparency by the end of July, according to the mayor.
Victoria city staff were initially directed to return to council at the end of June with an update on the progress on the recommendations made in the 2022 MNP LLP Governance Review Report, but Mayor Marianne Alto says delaying by a few weeks would mean movement on all of the recommendations, instead of most as is the current situation.
Instead, Alto amended the motion to have the report come to council on July 27 because the city plans on implementing the rest of the recommendations now through the end of July.
“Adding three weeks to this agenda just allows that work to be completed,” Alto said. “And the goal of all of this is to have all of this work completed before we take our summer break in early August.”
As part of the governance review report, the consultant heard from 865 Victoria residents, and 16 non-resident owners of property in the city, about thoughts on Victoria’s governance structures, processes and places to improve.
When the results of the survey were released, they showed 81 per cent of respondents had expressed they were ‘very dissatisfied (60%) or ‘dissatisfied’ (21%) with the city’s governance.
Former Mayor Lisa Helps said at the time she took the public feedback portion of the review with a grain of salt and placed greater weight on the consultant’s findings, since the online survey was self-selected and not statistical.
READ MORE: Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps responds to governance review survey
The 865 respondents out of a potential population size of 91,867 residents, according to the latest census data, expressed they were unhappy with council’s efficiency and felt decisions were made based on personal agendas.
The report made 30 recommendations on how the city could improve, focusing on the role of mayor and council, council remuneration, committees and advisory boards, the decision-making process, public access and input into decision-making, and transparency and accountability.
Laura Brougham
