Osoyoos to go to semi-annual department reporting,
By Lexi McFarlane, Times Chronicle
The frequency of departmental reporting to Council in the Town of Osoyoos is set to shift from a quarterly schedule to a semi-annual one following recent discussion.
At the March 24 Regular Council Meeting, the Director of Corporate Services, Marg Coulson, made a pitch to Council to switch the schedule of municipal departments’ reports to Council from a quarterly frequency, or four times a year, to now be twice annually with the semi-annual option.
Coulson explained this would help staff be more efficient, given it takes roughly 90 hours of staff time to prepare these reports. It would also relieve pressure in general on department Directors and staff, which Coulson’s report notes are “currently working beyond capacity”.
Beyond the efficiency factor, Coulson said that this switch would better inform Council, in presenting “longer-term trends” rather than the fluctuations that can occur seasonally, and by proxy in the quarterly reports, for operations and service areas. Capital project outcomes would also be better-informed with data from a larger scope.
The reporting periods would be for April 1 to September 30, and October 1 to March 31. The report notes this switch would allow staff additional time to complete audits and have all year-end financial information complete and validated.
An additional aspect of such a transition would be a shift in focus to using charts and graphs rather than tables, making semi-annual data easier to comprehend at a glance for both Staff and Council.
Coulson added one more way in which this shift in reporting would be beneficial to Council.
“The transition to semi-annual reporting would give staff the opportunity to review what’s being reported, and move towards reporting data that supports Council decisions,” Coulson said.
“For instance, instead of just saying how many dogs we found running in the streets, (we can) talk about the effectiveness of the bylaw enforcement on that; how were cases resolved? Was compliance gained with the owner of the dog? Was there a need for a fine; was this a repeat offence?”
Councillor Jim King, serving as the Acting Mayor for this meeting, asked Coulson if they would be able to switch back to quarterly reporting in the future if necessary.
“To make a report from five months ago, it’s different than two months ago,” King said.
“Of course,” Coulson affirmed. “We do (still) collect the information on a daily or weekly basis; it’s being collected the whole time. We don’t start collecting it at the reporting time .”
Councillor Johnny Cheong sought to ensure consistently-collected data could still be publicly available, and suggested creative ways to publish smaller forms of data, in lieu of quarterly reports.
“It helps with the public, if there’s some individuals who are more curious about some of the minutiae, then it’s easily accessible,” Cheong said. “And then maybe our Communications Officer could just post a random statistic here and there, just as a fun fact (series).”
The motion to make the switch to semi-annual reporting was approved unanimously by Council.
