How would you propose the City of Lethbridge decrease regulatory burdens on business using cost impact assessments?

• This pre-supposes that “cost impact assessments” are the only method to decrease regulatory burdens on businesses in Lethbridge.
• A better question we should be addressing is, “What’s actually required as a ‘regulatory impact assessment or municipal services delivery impact analysis’ for a specific sector or zone.
• These service bundles which are administered through a myriad of bylaws, form the basis for the property tax mill rate, roads and subsurface costs, development cost charges, business licenses, building permits, etc. as well as special zoning fees such as those additional assessments for business improvement areas/associations.
  • Truly understanding the regulatory burden requires that we develop a framework to identify and document the individual input costs of these services; the authority matrix for administering these services (identifies overlaps in authorities and costs); and the compliance service costs from the municipal perspective and the business owner/property owners’ perspective.
  • With this information we then have quantifiable data that we can use to identify the cost of the regulatory burden (doing business) in our community, by area, and look at practical ways to streamline the services and reduce the cost of the service delivery to these businesses.
  • As well this framework also enables us to look at the cost of any new initiative/program/infrastructure program and identify the cost impacts to business zones. That would enable us to answer the question – does this new program/initiative/infrastructure support the needs of the businesses or adds another input cost to them, furthering hampering their ability to stay in business.

How would you propose the City of Lethbridge reduce zoning and bylaw complexity?

• The most significant barrier with the Zoning Bylaw and Bylaws in general for the City of Lethbridge is that they are not in plain language. In the early 1990’s a program was rolled out across Canada for all levels of government to streamline Acts, Regulations and Bylaws and rewrite them using plain language so that these laws were easy to read, interpret and comply with.  This point has escaped our City.  Bylaws written with a lot of overly technical terms and legalese which only serves to frustrate citizens and business owners who would like to comply with what should be a straight-forward process and instead becomes a gotcha trap.
• Process flows should be readily available in downloadable documents for citizens.
  • The current Municipal Development Plan is actually a Community Plan. The new City Council needs to review and simplify the MDP so that it is a much shorter, concise document which identifies the vision for the areas of the community and from there, develop individual Neighborhood Development Plans with the input of affected citizens in those neighborhoods.  Citizens are more apt to participate in the development on neighborhood plans as these are the areas where they live, recreate, etc.
  • These plans, with citizen input, can identify the types of development that that the citizens believe are favorable to their area, any constraints (e.g. building heights), transportation considerations, safety considerations (street lighting, parking lot lighting, marked cross walks.  The simplified, streamlined Municipal Develop Plan and Neighborhood Development plans informs the Master Zoning bylaw, the rezoning bylaw, and a Subdivision and Development Appeals Board.  Most importantly should be a mandatory requirement to ensure that these documents are in plain language so that they are easy to understand and interpret.  Complexity adds costs to the citizens and businesses and enables the City staff to play gotcha and refuse or drag out approval processes. 
  • The process should also make clear the requirements for public hearings which would take place before 2^nd reading of a bylaw to amend zoning or applications for development that require a rezoning, and or a submission to the variance waivers for setbacks, etc. The processes should be mapped in straight forward flow charts so that developments and citizens can follow the processes instead of the current “snakes and ladder” machinations in use.

• Applications either conform to the existing zoning and proceed through review or the application requires a rezoning process. Firstly, the staff reporting should not be just from the city planner, but include a report from the Engineering (for any surface or subsurface impacts, access and egress considerations and costs) and from the Social Planner (benefits to the community (e.g. helping people with interim housing and social support to move them into a better path forward), behaviour mitigation such as managing noise complaints of the requestor’s clients, and other mitigation strategies that the requestor should consider); or the Heritage Planner or the Environmental Engineer for waste water and other environmental impacts.  As an example, this was lacking in the recent (August 2021) building plan/permit sought by the Streets Alive Mission.  The Committee Members were able to approve the plan for a larger, more community functional building, but deliberately did not approve the increase of beds from 18 (existing in the old facility) to 24 in the new facility.  This was totally out of step with the Municipal Development Plan.  There was self congratulating going on after the meeting.  The municipal planning commission has been successfully frustrating this building plan for a number of years.  This behaviour needs to cease immediately.

How would you propose the City of Lethbridge accelerate and streamline permitting approval processes?

• Currently it is difficult for anyone to find out how the process works (even if you can find some information on the City Website). City Administration needs to rethink their service model.  They are paid by the taxpayers and need to work to ensure that citizens receive the best service possible under the Municipal Act. 
• We need a one-stop service centre wherein Development Officers can answer questions and provide advice to citizens.
• The next element the City needs to undertake is an integrated process framework to identify and ensure that the correct staff are brought in to review a development permit or plan. This requires a proper tracking system wherein the electronic plans can be attached and can be rapidly and collectively reviewed by the required names staff or their back-up staff.  Parameters can be built in to flag any permits/plan reviews that are not meeting the time criteria and those are escalated to ensure that there is clarity for any problem solving that is needed and an action plan that everyone commits to.  These systems have been around for years and are used by municipalities that have a strong commitment to their citizens as time is money.
• Right now, if a citizen (includes a business person or contractor), gets frustrated because they have been bounced from one person to another and no-one can answer their questions, the city staff threaten to call the Police. This is a symptom of badly constructed processes and lack of professionalism and respect for citizens.
• For those days when things don’t go so well for the business, we could greatly benefit by the establishment of an Office of the Ombudsperson. This would be an independent person with the ability to assess a situation and either escalate, delegate, or mitigate the situation.  Never again should a business owner be treated with disdain and disrespect and told, “if you don’t like it maybe you shouldn’t be in business here”.   Based on the number of empty storefronts, that message is starting to resonate. 

If elected, would you support the City of Lethbridge working with chambers to promote shopping local?

• Create an online shopping mall where all local businesses, producers, merchants, and others with goods or services to offer. This would particularly assist vendors and providers who may not have the time, resources, or technical skills to create and maintain their own website.
• Create a “local rewards” currency to encourage consumers to spend their money in Lethbridge. This concept is not new and is working very well in other jurisdictions.  Interestingly, I had suggested this concept to the previous Chamber CEO but some “issues” derailed the plan and so it didn’t get implemented properly.  With appropriate agreements in place, I can show the Chamber exactly how to successfully launch and sustain this program.
• Free parking in the downtown area using a free shuttle service to carry shoppers, visitors, and employees between locations.

If elected, would you support accommodating affordable housing in long-term planning?

• I support a variety of subsidized housing accommodation models. This entails supporting the existing units in the community managed by the Lethbridge Housing Authority.  It would also include looking at our Neighborhood plans, and working with stakeholders in the community, identify locations for future housing stock (apartments, townhouses, detached single family units) or existing buildings that could be repurposed for this need.

• Additionally the City, the Province and the Lethbridge Housing Authority can look at a Housing Co-op model to enable people to get into property ownership through a Housing Cooperative that they would manage.
• Also we can look at a hybrid model wherein the City identifies land it owns, which it could contribute to affordable housing, and the private sector which could undertake the construction, that then could be offered below market for qualified individuals or families to enable them to get into reasonable rental units or rent to own units.

Do you support working with chambers to attract, develop, and retain skilled workers?

• It makes sense to work with Chambers to identify gaps in the local workforce and implement outreach programs to attract workers to the area.
• By working with the Lethbridge Community College, the University of Lethbridge, Economic Development Lethbridge and the business community, the opportunity to identify training programs to fill current and projected gaps in the workforce exists.

Would you support the City of Lethbridge publishing annual benchmark reports on service improvements?

• First of all, the City should be preparing annual service plans for all budgeted service areas. These would be clear, easy to understand service plans that identify the number of staff, budgets, purpose, objectives, and service performance metrics to identify where we are in terms of getting value for money for these services.
• Secondly, service plans provide line of sight into municipal services and help us identify if the City is involved in services that would be better carried out by other sectors (not-for-profit, businesses, commercial, etc.).
• Thirdly, Capital Planning needs a rethink. Capital Planning needs to be based first and foremost on infrastructure:  roads, sidewalks, sewers, water services, electrical services, storm drains and storm catchments.  Next in priority is the maintenance of existing public buildings.  Any new infrastructure should then be looked at as either critical (third bridge for traffic and safety management), or a nice to have, which might be funded by the community instead.  Any new major infrastructure should be funded through setting aside specific sub-reserve accounts under the municipal reserves.  This enables the City to have funding in place should an opportunity come up for matching grants for infrastructure.  It is important to note that the Municipal Reserve Account is not a piggy bank.  It is a specific financial account under the Municipal Act.
• While it is encouraging to see the City has begun to address the lack of reporting, it is critical that any detailed reports be made public in an easily understood manner (such as a “dashboard”) so that not just Management and Staff will benefit from this feedback. In this way the public will be able to appreciate the efforts being made by the City to be more transparent.