CONTRACT TALK
Not all trustees were behind the VSB's decision Monday night to hire an external contractor to review the district's finances and recommend cost-cutting and/or revenue-generating proposals for the 2012/13 budget.
The Vision Vancouver/COPE versus NPA divide was clear in the first board meeting since new trustees were sworn in. NPA trustee Ken Denike voted against the motion to award the $100,000 contract to PricewaterhouseCoopers. He told the Courier he's concerned about the "direct cost of [the] consultant, indirect cost in staff time, and [the] objective to establish a baseline."
He pointed to the 2010 comptroller general's report on the district's finances, which cost the provincial government $165,000. "The comptroller general's report in 2010 outlined the management problems the board has-governance through consensus with staff that will be impacted so status quo reigns," he explained in an email.
Denike maintains the board hasn't complied with recommendations, including addressing "cost drivers" such as subsidizing facility users; dealing with excess empty seats in the district and overly conservative financial management. "Aside from a tepid re-examination of fees for current users, the board has not made changes and structural funding shortfalls remain." Denike believes establishing a baseline would be useful for comparing Vancouver to other districts across Canada, but since education is a provincial responsibility and handled differently across the country, he's not sure what new information it will provide to address "cost drivers" that have already been identified in the special adviser's report.
Board chair and Vision trustee Patti Bacchus told me last week: "We're interested in seeing if there's a different way we can look at this-getting a fresh external set of eyes. It's kind of what I'd hoped would be accomplished when we had the special adviser in-maybe there are some areas or efficiencies we haven't seen."
Meanwhile, new NPA trustees Fraser Ballantyne and Sophia Woo abstained from voting on the motion.
Ballantyne said he learned about the review through the Courier and hadn't had time to digest the implications. "I said that if a family is overdrawn on all their household accounts and have monies owing, I wouldn't go and spend a $1,000 or even $100 to see where I needed to cut back. I would just do what I needed to do. Common sense suggests to me that I need to snip my credit cards, spend on the bare essentials... not spend more... knowing that I'm going to be in greater debt and get absolutely nothing in return in terms of my investment. I certainly hope spending this $100,000 is not a waste of time and money." Ballantyne added that he abstained out of respect for the last board's decision to put the motion forward and management's suggestion that there might be other areas identified that could be cut.
