Executive Decision-making at City Council?

When all Candidates for City Council (Mayor and 8 Ward Councillors) in the City Of Kawartha Lakes claim that “change is needed”, are they willing to change how they make decisions?

To the 27 Councillor Candidates for CKL City Council.

I applaud Doug Dickerson  for being the only Candidate for CKL Councillor to date to submit a SWOT+ Report. While Doug did not lay out his Report in a formal SWOT+ format, all of the ingredients for a SWOT+ analysis are contained in his Report.  

If Doug was our Ward 3 Councillor in the City of Kawartha Lakes today and if he were asked to participate in a SWOT+ “brainstorming” session with the Mayor and other elected Councillors on these topics, he would come to that meeting well prepared. This is this kind of thoughtful preparation that (I believe) will improve the decision-making performance of our new City Council.

As a former Board member, and one who thinks of City Council as a similar “executive committee” empowered to make important decisions, I appreciate the fiduciary role that every one of you will undertake on City Council if elected. You will be executives who will face a stream of challenges over the next 4 years. Your responsibility will encompass decisions regarding the allocation of CKL’s human capital (employees), asset capital (infrastructure, equipment, vehicles, contracts with 3rd party service providers, etc), financial capital (tax receipts, credit and debt arrangements, receipts from other levels of government, corporate donations, etc) and regulatory powers (the ability to make and oversee the enforcement of by-laws, and other rule-based mechanisms of authority. 

These four domains of responsibility are very complicated and it will take all new City Councillors a steep and lengthy learning curve to perform at their best. 

To reward Doug,  I am requesting to Woodville Freedom Group to include the Doug Dickerson SWOT+ REPORT in the next weekly Bulletin that will be sent to its 700 members by email. A few other Councillor Candidates have informed me that they are in the process of preparing a SWOT+ Report. I will ask the WFG to include all submissions in this email. 

I am also a writer of political and economic topics on Substack.com under the bulletin title MY LIFE LENS. I will also post all SWOT+ Reports there to reward every Candidate who shows the willingness to prepare a thoughtful report.

Good luck to all of you. MAY THE BEST (WO)MAN WIN!