Tantramar council has temporarily shelved a request from senior staff to pay a consultant $15,000 to create a corporate plan for the municipality.
Director of Community and Corporate Projects Jeff Taylor presented the idea to council on July 8.
“Our strategic plan is the ‘what’,” said Taylor. “And the corporate plan is the ‘how’. It’s the roadmap for how to get there.”
Taylor said staff decided to ask for a corporate plan proposal from the same consultants who created Tantramar’s strategic plan last year, because of their recent experience in the municipality. He said the $15,000 contract would include, “the project kick-off, their R&D, two half-day workshops, a draft corporate plan that we will then review with them, and then the final corporate plan that will be our roadmap going forward for how to achieve the strategic plan.”
Three councillors voiced their opposition to the idea of hiring a consultant to create the corporate plan. Councillor Barry Hicks said he felt, “we have staff that’s qualified to do this now. We know what we have to do. We go to work and get it done.”
Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell agreed with Hicks. “Our administration staff is a very capable staff,” said Wiggins-Colwell, “and our CAO should be able to handle this.”
Council Bruce Phinney also said he would not support the $15,000 expenditure on a corporate plan.
Tantramar’s strategic plan, approved this past spring, includes a laundry list of more detailed plans for the new municipality. The plan calls for a tax review, fire services review, recreation plan and housing plan this year. So far, a request for proposals has been issued for a new recreation plan, with one bidder submitting a proposal. The budget for the new recreation plan is $50,000.
With CAO Jennifer Borne absent Tuesday, treasurer Michael Beal defended the proposal, saying the thinking behind outsourcing the corporate plan would be “to not lose the momentum of our day to day operations.”
He said the consultants would “put in place a game plan in order to implement everything within the strategic plan, and get that moving along.”
“The strategic plan is very ambitious. It’s got a lot of required plans that are going to need to be implemented for the new municipality of Tantramar,” said Beal. “There’s going to need to be developments of RFPs. There’s going to be development of the requirements.”
Deputy Mayor Matt Estabrooks told council he would like more time to consider the proposal.
Normally, requests for council decisions come first to a committee of the whole meeting for discussion, but this time staff presented their request directly at a regular council meeting.
Councillor Michael Tower also agreed more time was needed, and so acting clerk Becky Goodwin recommended leaving the report with staff, who might bring it back to a future meeting.
Councillors all seemed to agree, and so the report was set aside with no motions made.
