Nanaimo City Hall Thinking?

Once upon a time the city of Nanaimo had a large scrap yard in the middle on some vacant city owned land.

An astute city councillor observed: "Someone may steal from it at night." So they directed the city manager to create a night watchman position and hire a person for the job.

Then city hall management wondered: "How does the watchman do his job without  instruction?" So they created a new planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

Then city council wondered: "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?"

So they directed city staff to create a Quality Control department and hired two people. One was to do the studies and one was to write the reports.

Then city hall management said, "How are these people going to get paid?"So they created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer then hired two people.

Then the Governance Review Committee wondered: "Who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they instructed staff to create an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal  Secretary.

During the budget review process one year later the City Councillors noted: "We have had this position in operation for one year and we are $918,000 over budget. " So they instructed city staff to bring a report advising the best way to control this budget expense.

City staff then engaged a private consultant to conduct a study and bring recommendations they could bring before council. The study cost a mere $50,000 but considering it was dealing with nearly a one million item, seemed a good investment.

Finally, three months later staff brought their recommendation before city council, who consider city staff's advice beyond reproach, immediately adopted the recommendation which was passed with barely any discussion.

They unanimously agreed to adopt the staff recommendation to  fire the night watchman.