By Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Tyler Waugh
The Town of Witless Bay is calling attention to what it calls the growing gap between municipal administrative responsibilities and the capacity to meet them and is taking the issue to Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador (MNL) for support.
Witless Bay council approved a resolution supporting ‘sustainable municipal administrative capacity’ for consideration by MNL at its annual general meeting later this year.
The resolution asks the Province to consider the financial and staffing impacts on towns before bringing in any new or expanded municipal reporting obligations and it also asks for funding, training and support to meet any new requirements.
"Sustainable municipal administrative capacity" means having the people, expertise, systems and financial resources needed to carry out municipal responsibilities reliably over time,” said Witless Bay’s new CAO Neil Stamp. “For residents, that translates into practical things: timely responses, well-managed projects, sound financial administration and the ability to plan for the community's future.”
Stamp said the concern comes from the range of duties a town office has to manage – from financial administration, procurement, planning and development, records, access-to-information requests, emergency preparedness, funding applications and everyday resident service which all compete for staff time.
“In a small municipality, many of those responsibilities fall to the same people. A complex file or an unexpected issue can absorb a significant share of the office's available capacity. One example I’ve raised previously is the work involved in responding to access-to-information requests,” Stamp said. “Transparency is an essential part of municipal government, and meeting that obligation requires time to locate, review and prepare records while other municipal work continues. The resources needed to do that work have to be part of the conversation.”
Stamp said the broader capacity issue can affect municipalities of different sizes, but smaller towns have less room to spread the workload or maintain specialized positions.
The resolution also asks MNL to advocate for a permanent, needs-based Municipal Administrative Capacity Fund providing predictable multi-year support for core administration and voluntary regional or shared professional services.
“From my perspective, the pressure is cumulative. Municipalities are managing a broad range of responsibilities while rising costs stretch their budgets. Councils are also very conscious of affordability for residents, which makes decisions about additional resources difficult. Technology can help, and we should keep improving how we work, but staff still need the time and expertise to assess information, make recommendations and follow through,” Stamp said. “I think we also need to consider staffing in terms of the service it enables. A salary budget tells us what we spend; it does not, by itself, tell us whether we have the capacity to deliver what residents need. When resources are necessary, we should be able to explain the need, the benefit and the trade-offs clearly.”
Witless Bay called the special meeting because the MNL deadline for resolutions was September 25 and the next regular council meeting was October 14.
If accepted for consideration, the Witless Bay resolution would go before the MNL membership during the conference and AGM in St. John's, November 5–7.
“Adoption would give MNL a mandate to pursue the requested action through its advocacy work; any resulting funding or policy changes would require further work,” Stamp said. “Ultimately, the concern is whether municipalities have the capacity to deliver the services and accountability residents rightly expect, consistently and over the long term.”
