By Troy Gillard

OPERATING BUDGET

External audit coming for recreation, parks and culture department

Jan 8, 2020 | 9:14 PM

Externals audits were discussed by Red Deer city council on day two of 2020 Operating Budget deliberations Wednesday at City Hall.

The city contracts value-for-money audits to examine the quality of the services it delivers and to find efficiencies within its departments.

Two such audits were on the books for this year – one for the corporate services department, the other for the recreation, parks and culture department – each with a $150,000 price tag.

Council decided to delay the corporate services audit and have the rec, parks and culture audit done later this year and early next.

Councillor Lawrence Lee suggested not doing either audit given the need to cut spending.

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“This is one of the most significant areas in our operations,” countered Mayor Tara Veer.

“We approved the value-for-money audit to attend to some of the systemic concerns that citizens have expressed to us. Some of those concerns (are) about user groups locating outside of the city because the city has priced our facilities and amenities out of the market.”

Veer also stressed the importance of ensuring Red Deer’s new facilities are being fully-utilized.

“Value-for-money audits are different than service and governance reviews. They are what have been used to drive change in our organization. And I think if we don’t proceed with the direction we’ve already given so that we can, instead of piecemealing those individual issues, look at it systemically to meet the needs of the community that we are today and position us for the future, we will forfeit our prime opportunity to address those systemic issues that we have been identifying.”

$50,000 will be spent on the audit in the third quarter of this year with the remaining $100,000 pushed to 2021.

Operating Budget deliberations continue Thursday at City Hall.