By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON May 11, 2011 – The city’s books closed December 31st and Councillor Paul Sharman was some ticked in getting a report four and a half months after the year end and he made his point of view very clear when he told senior city staff that corporations 20 times the size of Burlington would have year end figures on their desks within two weeks of the year end.
Council wants financial reporting to be much more timely so that they can get a grip on problems. Mayor Goldring suggested that the problems with the Tyendaga golf course could have been resolved much sooner if Council had had better financial information.
And he wanted no less from the number crunchers in Burlington. The city certainly has the tools to provide the data Council wants to see and what, one would hope, every manager wants at their finger tips. Burlington uses software from SAP, a German based multi-national that is amongst the top three financial software companies. Their stuff is pricey but it does the job and has software specific to the municipal sector.
Sharman, who brings more than thirty years of senior executive experience to his role as Councillor for Ward 5, has worked in environments where figures for each month were on the desks of senior management three days after the end of a month and five days after the end of a quarter. To be given numbers four and a half months after the year end was for Sharman “bizarre” and “I am”, he said “struggling with this. We should have known about these numbers a month after the year end at the very worst.”
Sharman then moved to issue a Staff Direction that would call for quarterly numbers not later than one month later. City Manager Roman Martiuk didn’t think a Staff Direction was necessary but he didn’t assure Sharman that he would get the numbers he wants for each quarter in 30 days. Martiuk mentioned that getting the year end numbers three and half months after year end “was somewhat typical” for Burlington. That didn’t appear to be acceptable to this Council – we can expect to hear quite a bit more on financial reporting.
Sharman says “Council has an information deficit”. Acting Executive Director of Finance is going to have to act quite a bit faster.
Council is struggling with what Sharman called ” a deficit of information” – they just don’t have the data they need to make the decisions they have to make and getting a year end summary four and a half months after the year end emphasizes that point.
The displeasure that council vented will in time work its way into how the city administration provides information to Council and to the public. There is a cultural shift taking place at City Hall that is going to require staff to do much more with less and at the same time get required information into the hands of Council faster.
We will follow up with just what was in the staff report soon.
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