Back around Christmas time I submitted the column below to the Winnipeg Free Press.

The column never ran as it was a 'year end round-up' piece and by the time I submitted it I was told the paper was full until the early new year...yes, bad timing on my part. 

Regardless, as it highlighted a few of the good activities down at city hall, I figured I may as well put it on our blog (even if it is late). Like the saying goes - you never know what a little public praise can do!

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City Hall Kudos

City hall took a pretty good beating this year for a number of gaffes and not-so-taxpayer friendly decisions.

Throw in a cameo at city hall in October by a woman with a baby chicken and it's easy to see why it's often called "Silly Hall."

However, there were plenty of good decisions and initiatives pursued by various members of council that are worth taking a moment to applaud. In the spirit of the holiday season, let's take a second to praise those actions.

Let's begin with Councillor Jenny Gerbasi. She was the first to call for an audit around all the questionable real estate transactions down at the city. Remember the fire hall the city built on someone else’s land? And how the same deal included swapping parcels of city land with a business while many councillors had no idea what was going on?

Thumbs up Councillor Gerbasi for working hard on that burning issue.

Next up, Councillors Browaty and Wyatt. Back in October, State of the City Research founder Brian Kelcey and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a non-profit taxpayers’ watchdog group, presented a number of shortcomings and suggestions related to the city’s real estate processes to council’s property committee.

Councillors Wyatt and Browaty acted on some of the recommendations immediately and even pushed to retender a couple of untendered contracts worth hundreds of thousands. The latter immediately sent positive signals to those among the city’s real estate industry that have lost confidence in city hall. Kudos to the Browaty/Wyatt tag-team. If politics doesn’t work out, maybe the two could form a wrestling team?

And on that note, honourable mention to Brian Kelcey, who may not be on council, but deserves recognition for his dogged advocacy and watch dogging efforts at city hall. The more citizens that keep an eye on council, the better.

In November, Councillor Havixbeck grilled bureaucrats for three hours on cost overruns at the new Portage Ave fire hall. This is the same facility bureaucrats built a third larger than planned without going back to council for approval. Oh, and at one point they thought they’d put a mini fire hall museum in the facility; even though the fire hall was going to be built in the middle of a traffic cloverleaf and lacks public parking.

Far too often at city hall politicians just shrug their shoulders at cost overruns and ultimately do nothing about it. Havixbeck’s colleagues should not only copy her drive to get to the bottom of cost overrun debacles, they should consider pushing for financial penalties or pink slips for bureaucrats that oversee projects that end up way over budget. Regardless, keep up the accountability-driven grillings Councillor Havixbeck.

Thumbs up to Councillor Fielding who was the only one to vote against the new photo radar deal; recognizing that unlike real police officer speed traps, photo radar vehicles haven't pulled over a single dangerous driver since it started up in Winnipeg over a decade ago.

Fielding has also been pushing an initiative to get the city to shop around more for the delivery of city services. Homeowners shop around before hiring someone to do services like re-shingling their roofs, so it’s good that Fielding wants the city to see if some city services could be provided at a lower cost by private businesses.

No doubt the aforementioned councillors, as well as the rest of their colleagues, deserve praise for a number of other wise decisions on behalf of taxpayers over the past year.

It’s definitely not all silliness at the city. With any luck, public praise of wise decisions will lead to fewer unwise decisions.