Members of Yellowknife city council heard from an asset management professional when it comes to things like managing risks, balancing budgets and how they connect to service levels.
The presentation by Lachlan Maclean of Maclean Consulting, delved into a number of different fiduciary scenarios, with some emphasis on looking ahead to establish ‘protection’ efforts for city assets in the future. Maclean laid out several proposals on the topic of risk management, explaining to council the appropriate time to replace City tools such as City Hall based on inflation rates and budgeting.
“We want to know where taxpayer money is being used as efficiently as possible,” Maclean says. “Risk management is a preventative practice, a tough concept to grasp is managing risk means spending money so that nothing happens… residents often look for tangible evidence of their taxes, and it can be hard to show what could have happened if the money was not spent,” he adds.
Maclean challenged council members to reflect on services offered in the past, and spoke on the reality of accepting risk as it relates to the city’s future. “There is no zero risk scenario, and accepting risk is council’s role,” Maclean says. “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now,” he adds.
Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty and most of her council responded to Maclean’s presentation positively, and shared her thoughts on how the presentation relates to current council goals. “I think our term will be defined by this (the presentation) particularly with hyper-inflation costs we’ll have to think about this more and more,” Alty says. “Do we keep it down the way, or are we causing future problems,” Alty asks her council, referencing increasing fire-hall renovation costs.
