Reforming Thunder Bay City Council: The Journey Begins

 

It appears that Thunder Bay City Council has finally decided to get serious about looking at its size and composition with the move to appoint a six-member citizen committee that will lead a review process over the next year that might actually result in changes in time for the 2026 municipal election.  The committee will have a far-reaching mandate to explore the size of council, their status as full or part-time membership as well as the structure of the current at-large and ward hybrid model that has governed Thunder Bay municipal politics since the 1980s.  When Thunder Bay was created it 1970, it began with a mayor and 12 councillors elected evenly across four wards which was revised to seven wards in 1976 and then took its current form of seven ward and five at large councillors in 1985.

 

This is coming about nearly three years after a previous council began to explore the issue and which ultimately generated this post which concluded: “it would be better if more of an effort was made to commission an independent arm’s length panel to review the situation and present options to council.”  Well, a committee has finally been appointed by City Council and is made up of six members.  The committee is chaired by former councillor Rebecca Johnson and vice-chaired by another former councillor Cody Fraser as well as citizens Riley Burton, Wayne Bahlieda, Heather McLeod and Carlos Santander-Maturana. 

 

The committee will conduct a two-phase consultation with the public.  The first phase includes a survey to ascertain how the public engages and interacts with City Council and examining if they have a desire to see changes to the composition of council. Phase two will include discussion and consultation with the public on potential options that could result in changes to council composition and/or the ward boundaries.  The committee will then take all of this information and “provide a report to City council with recommended changes to the composition of council or the ward system next year”.

 

The wording on the City of Thunder Bay website seems to imply that there will be changes and the chair of the committee in a TBTNewswatch story seemed to say that she believed that this time there were going to be changes made.  Indeed, phase two already says it is about options for change even before phase one has ascertained a desire for change  This is somewhat disconcerting because it suggests that someone or somebody somewhere has already decided that changes will be made, and the only real question is what those changes might be.  When put alongside a less than transparent process for committee member selection that were apparently “carefully chosen” and a survey that requires registration, one begins to wonder if the result is already a foregone conclusion.  Of course, one should be charitable on an issue that has reared its head up numerous times over the years and has only finally resulted in a serious attempt to examine it.  Given the length of time it has taken to get to this point, I suppose one should simply be grateful a committee has been struck even if the process seems akin to foxes guarding the hen house.

 

It is fair to ask what possibly an economist could contribute to a debate on municipal governance?  However, barring the reality that economists are municipal citizens too, it remains that economists are fully capable of examining the costs and benefits of institutional arrangements and their evolution as well as public finance aspects.  It is not an incursion into new territory to be staked out but rather an extension of what many institutional economists and economic historians already do.   In the case of the size, structure, composition and representativeness of the current institutional arrangement, there needs to be a framework for the decision making as well as an examination of what issues need to be addressed with the change.

 

A change in the current arrangements of municipal council represents an institutional change or innovation and such changes should be made if the perceived net benefits of the new arrangement exceed the net benefits of the previous one plus the costs of transitioning to a new arrangement – both social and economic costs.  It requires in the end an analysis of the current system and its benefits and costs not just economically but in terms of effectiveness in democratic representation and decision making as well as community spirit and engagement. 

 

What is not functioning under the current arrangement?  What could be improved?  What are the advantages of the current system of seven ward and five at-large representatives plus a mayor and what are its drawbacks?  In other words, what exactly are we trying to fix or improve.  What is driving the need to make changes to city council?  For example, simply being unable to get a consensus on building a new turf facility is not a reason to change the decision-making mechanism. Similarly, rancorous meetings are also not a reason to reform city council if the debate results in things getting done or poor decisions avoided.

 

Much of the debate in the past has focused on issues like ward councillors being too focused on their wards and not seeing the “bigger picture” when it comes to city issues.  Other times, there have been concerns that at-large councillors by not being tied to a ward and its needs were somehow shirking their duties by picking and choosing what they wanted to focus on.  Indeed, Thunder Bay politics at the municipal level has occasionally seemed like council consisted of a mayor, five mayors in waiting and seven dwarf councillors left to do a lot of the heavy lifting on local issues.  On the other hand, one could also argue that having five at large councillors allowed for citizens to go beyond their immediate ward councillor when lobbying if they felt they had not had their issue addressed.

 

And the hybrid system itself with two types of councillors is rather unique – why is it that Thunder Bay cannot have either a system of all ward councillors or all at large councillors?  What was the original purpose of going to a hybrid model and have those reasons shifted?  Then, there is the issue of the total number of councillors given the population size as on a per capita basis Thunder Bay probably has more councillors than many other cities in Ontario.  Burlington, for example, with a population nearly double that of Thunder Bay, has six ward councillors plus a mayor.  Kingston, on the other hand, which is one and a half times Thunder Bay’s population, has a mayor representing “the city as a whole” and twelve district councillors.

 

Perhaps fewer councillors but all full-time rather than the current part-time might make for better decision making.  However, that would likely mean a higher stipend and part of the argument for reducing the size of council is a belief that somehow there are going to be cost savings.  If you are indeed looking at cost savings in municipal government, reducing the number and salaries of councillors is merely symbolic as the real savings lie elsewhere. On the other hand, one can argue that being a councillor is about community service and the money should not matter.

 

Would having all councillors as ward councillors make the council too parochial as each seeks only to look after neighborhood concerns?  Or will having all at-large councillors undermine the position of mayor as all councillors can claim to have a city-wide mandate from the electorate?  Indeed, if all the councillors are at large, why elect a separate mayor at all?  Make the mayor the at-large councillor with the most votes.  Or, if we move to an all-at-large approach, will only high-profile individuals and financially better off individuals being able to run for council given that ward races can favour ward residents with close neighborhood ties while city wide campaigns are more expensive to mount? 

 

And all of this of course is intertwined with the issue about whether we need to or should redesign our ward system given the current imbalances in population across wards as populations in the city have shifted.  Should we go to eight or ten numbered as opposed to named wards with approximately equivalent populations, as well as a mayor?  Should the councillors be all at-large or all ward based or some new type of hybrid?  What should the borders of the new wards be?  Will changing the number of wards and councillors as well as redesigning borders lead to better democratic accountability?  More citizen involvement? And on top of all of this – do we want a first past the post system electing our councillors?  Ranked or weighted ballots – especially for at-large candidates?

 

 

 

As mentioned before, all of this is really not new territory for an economist.  Institutions and their quality are fundamental to successfully functioning economies.  Has Thunder Bay been hurt economically by its current municipal institutions? Indeed, one could in a moment of introspection go further and ask if amalgamation was responsible for the economic slowdown after 1970 given a monopoly one-city government replaced what were a set of competitive municipalities.  There can be a lot at stake here as change for the sake of change without understanding the reasons for change as well as the long-term ramifications can leave us worse off.  Borrowing from the words of our outgoing City Manager, if you “don’t know what you don’t know”, then how can you know that what you are doing is the best decision possible?  The committee indeed has its work cut out for it and one hopes that they are independently minded enough to be able to know what questions to ask, when to ask them and more importantly, when to suggest to do something and when to do nothing.

Municipal Election Analysis 2018: Thunder Bay Mayoral Race

The results are in and former provincial Liberal Cabinet Minister Bill Mauro will be the next Mayor of Thunder Bay.  Congratulations to Mayor Mauro as well as all the hard-working candidates who chose to run for office.  Thanks also to outgoing council members who have seen years of public service.  Public service is never easy and putting your name forth as a candidate and serving as an elected official is an important act of participation in our democracy.

The new Mayor-Designate took 34 percent of the 41,108 votes cast for mayor edging out soon to be former City Councillor Frank Pullia who took 32 percent of the vote.  The choice of mayor was in many respects part of a general desire for change at the municipal level given that both of the higher profile council incumbent candidates for mayor went down to defeat.  Indeed, the new council represents a significant but not overwhelming amount of change with a number of new faces as well as new but familiar faces – as in the example of the new mayor.

Yet, the aspect of this race I found the most interesting was the collapse of the protest vote which saw Shane Judge garner only 5,155 votes (13 percent of the total) compared to his 2014 total of 9,531 which was a 26 percent share of the total.  Even more interesting was the collapse of support for Iain Angus who as a Councillor at Large in 2014 won with 15,861 votes and who as a candidate for mayor in 2018 was only able to manage about a third of that at 5,816. 

One wonders if this signals a general rightward shift in the Thunder Bay electorate given at least my perception of the generally left of center positions of Iain Angus.  Indeed, this may reflect a weakening of the labour vote in general given that Angus was endorsed by the Thunder Bay District Labour Council for Mayor and none of the five at large candidates endorsed by the Labour council won either.   Only three of the Labour Council ward endorsements won (Foulds, Ch’ng and Oliver). Or it may reflect a shift in voter priorities towards lower property taxes given that taxation was continually brought up as an issue during this campaign.The new mayor and several of the winning candidates have emphasized that taxation rates were an issue.

Figure 1 presents the ranked votes by mayoral candidates and most starkly illustrates how despite there being four high profile candidates, it was essentially a two-person race.  Indeed, one wonders what results would have been like if the provincial liberals had won the spring election and Bill Mauro had not entered the municipal race.  It is possible that in the absence of Bill Mauro’s entry, Frank Pullia might very well be the mayor today.  
 

Much is being made of the success of the new online/telephone voting system so a breakdown by type of ballot is interesting.  While voter participation is up above 50 percent this election and voter totals are up I would not venture to say that more convenient online voting options have resulted in a dramatic surge in participation.  Those who want to vote will vote no matter what the system is and the chief advantage of the new system is that it is more convenient for many people. While 41,108 ballots were cast for mayor this election, last time it was 37,123.  The result was an additional 3985 ballots cast – an increase of 13.4 percent.  This is actually a respectable increase but whether it was due to an appetite for change or the convenience of online voting will take a few more elections to see if the increase is sustained.

Of the 41,108 ballots cast for mayor, 15,249 - 37 percent- were paper ballots while 25,775 – 63 percent – were online/telephone ballots.  The preference does appear to be for the convenience of online/phone voting.  Figure 2 shows the distributions of the paper mayoral ballots. 
 

Figure 3 shows the distribution of the online/telephone ballots and Figure 4 the total distribution.  The results for the paper and the online/telephone ballots generally parallel each other but a closer examination shows that among the paper ballots, Frank Pullia had 33 percent of the vote and Bill Mauro 32 percent while in the online/telephone results it was 35 percent for Bill Mauro and 31 percent for Frank Pullia.  Overall, Bill Mauro became Mayor with 34 percent of the total vote and Frank Pullia was second with about 32 percent.

 

 

This is quite an interesting result because it raises the question as to whether the outcome might have been different if only paper ballots (which incidentally are also tabulated electronically) had been used.  It does appear that Frank Pullia had an edge with more traditional medium voters while Bill Mauro’s edge was with online voters.  This is also interesting given that the Pullia campaign was very social media intensive meaning it was fully engaged with the new technology.

This is also an interesting result because given the overall turnout – about 51 percent – and the number of candidates splitting the votes resulting in the winner only holding 34 percent of the total vote.  It means the mayor in the end was elected by about 17 percent of eligible voters.  This is not Bill Mauro’s fault by any stretch of the imagination.  People who are unhappy with small pools of voters rather than a majority deciding their leaders should make sure they get out and vote. On the other hand, perhaps recognition of this low effective support is why the incoming mayor seems relatively low key and unambitious given that his goal is to focus on one or two soft infrastructure projects - like an indoor tennis facility - rather than roads and bridges. I suspect many voters will be surprised to find out a tennis facility is going to be one of the new mayor's priorities.

In any event, these results should provide food for thought for many analyses to come. Next time, I will take a look at the At-Large results.

Choosing Thunder Bay's Next Mayor

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Henry V

The municipal election process in Thunder Bay culminating this October is starting to pick up steam and there are now two candidates in the running for mayor: Iain Angus and Larry Hebert.  Both are long time stalwarts of Thunder Bay City Council and have contributed years of valued service to the community in assorted capacities.  Both also topped the polls last election for the position of Councillor at Large with Angus at 15,861 votes and Hebert at 14,664.  Given that the two top contenders for the Mayor’s Chair last election came in at 14,463 (Keith Hobbs) and 12,051 (Ken Boshcoff) votes, they are certainly credible contenders for the position of Mayor. 

Of course, when one looks at the current composition of City Council, there is indeed an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potential candidates for Mayor.  It is always time for a female Mayor in Thunder Bay and given Rebecca Johnson’s sterling career of community service, one would expect that she would also consider a run for Mayor. It would be credible given she garnered 14,620 votes last election in the At Large race.   Frank Pullia has carved out a strong role both as an advocate for community causes as well as a strong showing in the finance portfolio at City Hall.  At 14,112 votes last election, he is a key contender.

And of course, who can forget the ubiquitous Aldo Ruberto whose passion for quality of life issues in Thunder Bay plus 14,311 votes in the last At Large Race also puts him within reach of the Mayor’s Chair.  There are also some strong candidates in the ward Councillor category – the names that particularly come to mind are Joe Viridiramo and Andrew Foulds.  They are both high profile candidates committed to their city and with exposure across the community.

Of course, they cannot all be mayor but being the Mayor in Thunder Bay is important given the need for a sustainable economic future that embraces all the people of Thunder Bay and the leadership role that Thunder Bay plays in the region.  It is important to have as strong a slate of visionary candidates as possible to generate the ideas we need to move forward.  This election is an opportunity for defining debates and visions in the areas of economic development, First Nations relations and social and urban affairs and what better way than a strong Mayor’s race with many quality candidates. 

It should be noted that the race for Mayor need not be relegated to current City Council incumbents.  There are many individuals in Thunder Bay who also have strong community leadership credentials and it would be a shame if Ken Boshcoff or Shane Judge did not put their names forward again. Indeed, Shane Judge apparently will be running.  It is also a shame that Lisa Laco has stated she is not running.  And then there is the business community.   Having someone prominent from our local business community step up would also bring a vital perspective to the municipal election especially with respect to issues of business development and taxation. 

This is a crucial time for picking Thunder Bay’s next Mayor and council given the many challenges that have faced our community over the last four years and that will continue in the future.  We are also picking a Mayor who will be the public face of our community at an important milestone – the 50^th anniversary of Thunder Bay’s creation that will occur in 2020.  Having a strong mayor’s race full of vigorous visions would be the ultimate community contribution our community leaders could make.  Having a strong slate of candidates for Mayor would be a vote of confidence in the importance of municipal politics in Thunder Bay and the importance of civic leadership in shaping our future.  It is time for our accomplished community leaders to step up to the leadership challenge and run for mayor.