PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

Performance Measurement



Performance Measurement

Introduction

Local governments have mandates to deliver a wide and growing range of services to their residents, and, in that respect, they are generally in a different position from their more senior government counterparts. Many local government services are tangible and affect residents daily. The immediacy of local government services creates opportunities for residents to directly assess performance. Local governments are key in the governance system in Canada. In 2008, local governments in Canada budgeted for expenditures of nearly $123 billion. This represents approximately 18.5 per cent of the consolidated federal, provincial, and local government spending in 2008. The consolidated local government expenditures in education alone amounted to $48 billion. Budgeted local government spending was on par with federal or provincial expenditures in providing general government services, protection of persons and property, and transportation and communication. Further, local governments were planning to spend considerably more than their counterparts on environmental initiatives and recreational and cultural programs and services (Ammons, 1999).

In Canada, local governments have been under increasing pressure to deliver more services with the limited revenue sources from which they can draw. An ongoing problem for local governments has been the tendency for senior governments to download responsibilities without commensurate necessary resources. This “mandates without money” issue is a persistent irritant in the relationships between local governments in Canada, provincial governments and the federal government. Value for money is a major issue for local government managers and elected officials. In Canada, property taxes and user-charges are the two principal ways in which revenues are raised. This is a narrow revenue base compared to that for local governments in the U.S. and Europe. Local government officials regularly find themselves caught between increasing demands for services and low tolerance for property tax increases (Howard, 2005).

Description of Lethbridge, Alberta

Lethbridge is a mid-sized city located in southern Alberta, with a current population (2009) of 83,960. Like most municipalities, the City of Lethbridge provides a wide range of services and programs that have daily impacts on residents. The city employs approximately 1,400 full-time and part-time staff and has an annual operating budget of $232 million (Lethbridge 2010). Governance is provided through a council-manager structure. City council and the position of city manager are established under, and empowered by, the Municipal Government Act. The nine-person council consists of the mayor and eight aldermen. City council provides direction to the leader's team and is politically accountable for establishing levels of service and the overall fiscal performance of the city.

The city manager is responsible for providing leadership for the organization under the direction of city council. As is shown in Figure 1, the city administration is composed of several layers of management. A team of senior managers, or “leaders,” consisting of the director of corporate services, the director of community services, the director of infrastructure services, and the director of corporate initiatives, assist the city manager in directing the activities of the organization and in developing corporate policy. Each of these senior managers in turn leads ...