Review gets green light from Regina’s exec committee, could save more than $17M

An efficiency review for the City of Regina has passed its latest hurdle and could soon be on the way to saving administration millions of dollars every year.

On Wednesday, all nine of the councillors in attendance at an executive committee meeting approved the report, allowing it to go on to city council next week for final approval.

The review and report were done by Deloitte, looking at the efficiency of six city services: Procurement, fleet lifecycle management, roadways management, parks and open space management, facilities lifecycle management, and information technology.

Ultimately, Deloitte found 53 opportunities for more efficiency, which altogether could save the city $26.9 million.

“During the review, we observed some challenges with service delivery and many opportunities for improvement (some of which the City is already addressing),” read the report.

Deloitte said the city needs to ingrain a service mindset and culture into every aspect of its operations. Auditors also found examples of behaviours that led them to believe that staff are not “universally focused on carrying out their duties to the best of their abilities” both in public and at city locations.

“This is one of the most important reports that has come in front of exec committee and will council in my time as city manager,” said Chris Holden.

Holden said city officials had heard about the need for fairly significant change and improvement to service and performance cultures.

“The mayor highlighted (Tuesday) in her State of the City address: As an organization, we need to be better and this is all about making sure that we are better,” said Holden.

Creating efficiencies in city operations was one of Mayor Sandra Masters’ campaign promises when she was elected. She said some of these efficiencies have been on the city’s list for a while and this is just pushing them to the front.

She said the report will give city officials somewhere to focus and push forward to drive for change.

Of the 53 opportunities identified, city administration is looking to act on the 14 biggest-ticket items, which together could cost up to $12.6 million once to implement, but would save $17.2 million per year.

The 14 opportunities are:

• Define and apply key performance indicators;
• Improve procurement approaches;
• Increase the scope of telematics, analyze and act on the data collected;
• Introduce long-term contract and vendor management;
• Reduce operator damage to city equipment;
• Establish a transformation office;
• Implement a modern Customer Relationship Management system;
• Clarify service definition;
• Schedule and deploy parks resources more effectively;
• Revise procurement contract terms;
• Consolidate low-value purchasing;
• Improve civic maintenance operations;
• Introduce a ratchet to limit asset replacements when budgeting; and,
• Monitor utilities at city locations and act to reduce usage.

If approved at December’s city council meeting, the report would be accepted and city administration would come back in January with implementation plan with timelines and reporting criteria. The changes would be expected to be fully implemented by the end of 2024.