Editorial: Mayors & Reeves, It's Time to Look in the Mirror

To borrow, or perhaps semi quote, Jim Prentice during Alberta's 2015 provincial election, "Mayors, it's time to look in the mirror."

I know this probably will not make me popular in every council chamber across Alberta, but it is time someone said what a lot of municipal leaders are quietly admitting behind closed doors. Yes, municipal funding is a real challenge. Yes, infrastructure is expensive. Yes, provincial governments deserve their share of criticism. But more and more, the problems municipalities are wrestling with today were not created in the last budget. They were created over decades of choices made by councils that preferred ribbon cuttings over replacing water mains.

Perhaps the most revealing conversation I had during the last week was with a mayor who admitted he is frustrated by the constant political attacks aimed at the province. This mayor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he believes some municipal leaders have chosen the easiest target instead of having the more difficult conversations happening inside their own communities.

"I hate seeing mayors take shots at the province because, to me, it feels like passing the buck to a level of government that does not fully deserve the blame," the mayor said. "The province is the easiest one to blame right now because most residents see it as a distant figure. But I know the past mayors and councils. I know them personally. Our kids grew up together. It is much easier to criticize a premier who was not sitting around that council table when those decisions were made than to admit that some of our own choices contributed to where we are today."

The mayor admitted this position has created tension with some municipal leaders who wanted a united front against the provincial government. The relationship between some mayors has become strained because this mayor refused to stand beside those who wanted to place the entire responsibility on Premier Smith, Premier Kenney, or even Premier Notley.

The issue, the mayor argued, is bigger than any one premier or political party. It is about decades of decisions made at the local level that cannot simply be erased by pointing fingers at the legislature.

That may be the most uncomfortable truth facing municipal governments today. Blaming the province is politically convenient because it creates a clear villain. Holding previous councils accountable requires a much harder conversation because those decisions were made by people who still live in these communities, volunteer in these communities, and often remain friends and neighbours.

Communities are dealing with aging roads patched so many times they resemble quilts, water systems held together by optimism and duct tape, and infrastructure that should have been replaced years ago. Today's mayors are left trying to explain why everything is breaking at once, while also asking taxpayers and senior governments to help pay the bill. That is not entirely their fault, but pretending history started when the current council was elected is not exactly honest either.

Municipal politics has developed a favourite hobby, blaming the province. It does not matter which party is in government because Queen's Park, the Legislature, or whichever capital happens to be nearby always makes a convenient villain.

Every funding debate eventually arrives at the same destination. If only the province would write a bigger cheque, all would be well. Sometimes that is true. Often provincial funding has not kept pace with municipal growth. But it is only part of the story. The other part sits in old council minutes where project after project was approved because it looked good in campaign brochures while critical infrastructure quietly slipped further down the priority list.

That is the uncomfortable conversation municipalities need to have. The issues facing communities today are rarely the result of one bad budget or one bad government. They are the accumulated result of decades of decisions. Councils chose wants over needs.

Recreation complexes beat reservoir upgrades. Bigger libraries beat better roads. New facilities beat replacing aging water systems. Those decisions were popular then. They are expensive now.

Another mayor told me her community needs more amenities to attract investment. I challenged that idea. Investors like nice facilities, but they also like communities where the taps work, the roads do not resemble obstacle courses, and emergency services can actually reach them. Families appreciate a swimming pool, but they appreciate clean drinking water a little more. It turns out flushing the toilets at the library is considerably easier when the water system underneath it actually functions.

Perhaps we have confused wants with needs. Ten or fifteen years ago many communities convinced themselves they needed a new pool, a bigger library or a massive recreation complex. Looking back, maybe those were things they wanted. What they actually needed was to replace aging pipes, upgrade sewage systems, improve roads and invest in infrastructure that nobody would ever put on a campaign sign because it lives underground.

Here is the harsh reality. Every community does not need a pool. Every community does not need a state of the art recreation centre. Every community does not even need its own library when regional partnerships may provide better value. But every community needs safe drinking water. Every community needs reliable roads. Every community needs infrastructure that lasts longer than the next election cycle.

Too many municipal leaders today seem stuck in campaign mode instead of governing mode. It is easier to announce the next big project than explain why council is spending millions replacing pipes nobody can see. It is easier to point at the province than point at decades of municipal decisions. But leadership is not about finding someone else to blame.

It is about making difficult choices that the next council, and the next generation, will thank you for.

So the next time I hear a mayor declare that the province simply needs to come to the table, I have one question. What did your community build that it really did not need while the essentials were left waiting? The answer may be uncomfortable, but it is probably more useful than another press release demanding someone else's cheque.

Municipalities are at a crossroads. They can keep insisting the solution lies entirely in another level of government, or they can admit that many of today's infrastructure headaches were decades in the making.

Looking in the mirror is never easy, but it is usually where the solution begins. After all, if you are going to build the fanciest pool in the region, it is probably worth making sure the community still has enough water to fill it.