Value for Money Review outlines recommendations for Red Deer's culture, recreation and parks service areas .

By Alessia Proietti

Value for Money Review

Recommendations for Red Deer’s culture, recreation and parks services

Dec 7, 2021 | 9:41 AM

A “Value for Money Review” presented to council Monday evening evaluated the City’s culture, recreation and parks service areas, assessing current operations and identifying areas for improvement.

In January 2020, council approved $150,000 for the review. However, with the pandemic causing delays, the City outsourced the review to KPMG, a third-party tax, audit and advisory organization, in April 2021.

The review prioritized 20 opportunities for the City to explore. Examples include:

• Reduce Tree Maintenance Costs
• Explore Revenue Generation Opportunities at Parks
• Develop Master Plans and Strategic Guidance for Recreation

Officials say each opportunity considers potential benefits on a scale of effectiveness, economy, efficiency, fairness, and environment. They also consider ease of implementation, like cost, time, and risk. Additionally, each contains a rationale, associated key activities, a review of current services and fees, additional revenue-generating opportunities, and broader strategic planning for future guidance.

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“We are committed to offering value to our residents and businesses through the services we provide,” said Lisa Perkins, General Manager of Corporate and Employee Services. “Using a values framework adopted by council, we regularly review services and program areas to evaluate the quality of services we provide and to find ways to do that even better.”

The report provides various graphical representations of services in Red Deer compared to population size and other major cities in the province.

Some of the findings include:

• Satisfaction rates for quality of life, and recreation and culture services are higher in Red Deer than comparing municipalities.
• Red Deer provides a higher number of culture and recreation facilities per 100,000 population, especially in terms of outdoor rinks (3.5 times as many) and heritage sites (3 times as many).
• Red Deer’s playgrounds per capita is lower than the average data collected
• While Red Deer offers similar drop-in recreation and culture programming hours per capita, other municipalities have nearly double in registered program hours. Levels of participation have been decreasing.

The City developed its Value for Money framework in 2016, using this approach in reviews of planning and developing services in 2016, and a policing review in 2019.

The Value for Money Review of Culture, Recreation and Parks Services report was first brought forward to Council’s Audit Committee in November. The Committee directed administration to develop an implementation plan and bring it back for review within the first quarter of 2022.

“The information and recommendations in the report are quite timely as council is set to embark on our Strategic Plan and long-term vision in the New Year,” said Councillor Michael Dawe, Audit Committee Chair. “This report will assist council in making informed decisions to better our recreation, parks and culture programming and service offerings for our community.”

Culture, recreation and parks services are now divided between Safe and Healthy Communities and Parks and Public Works departments, following an organizational restructure in September 2020.

The full Value for Money Review is available on City website at reddeer.ca/ValueForMoney.