Making Victoria City Hall Work Better

By Jerry Garcia

The Goal

  • Build a City Hall focused on faster service, clearer accountability, disciplined execution and better value for taxpayers.
  • Connect Council priorities, budgets, projects, service standards and results through one understandable operating system.
  • Make it easy for residents to see what was promised, what it will cost, who is responsible, when it will be completed and whether it worked.

Why Reform Matters

  • Residents experience City Hall through permits, service requests, public spaces, infrastructure, business approvals and capital projects.
  • Victoria’s 2026 plan includes approximately $394.1 million in operating expenditures and $160.1 million in capital improvements.
  • Even modest improvements in permitting, procurement, project delivery and administrative productivity could generate significant public value.
  • Reform should strengthen existing systems, not assume that City staff or public institutions are fundamentally broken.

Guiding Principles

  • Measure results residents experience, not simply activities completed.
  • Redesign services before reorganizing departments.
  • Test changes, establish baselines and expand what works.
  • Assign clear accountability without creating a culture of blame.
  • Make performance and project information public by default.
  • Improve speed without lowering safety, accessibility, environmental or design standards.
  • Respect the division between Council governance and professional administration.

What Success Would Look Like

  • Residents can see whether major initiatives are on schedule and on budget.
  • Permit applicants know the requirements, expected timelines and status of their files.
  • Service requests are routed once and resolved predictably.
  • Budget increases show the service or outcome being purchased.
  • Major projects identify risks and cost pressures before they become crises.
  • Public engagement reports explain how community input affected decisions.
  • Council commitments remain visible until they are completed.
  • City staff spend less time moving information between systems and more time solving problems.
  • Residents receive clearer accountability, more responsive services and better value for their taxes.

What the Plan Does Not Recommend

  • Arbitrary staffing cuts.
  • Lower safety, accessibility or environmental standards.
  • Replacing professional judgment with artificial intelligence.
  • Creating another reporting bureaucracy.
  • Political micromanagement of City operations.
  • Promising outcomes controlled by other governments.
  • Using dashboards without baselines, targets, owners and corrective actions.

The 12 Core Reforms

  • Use the 2027 Corporate Plan as the City’s central public operating plan.
  • Give each major outcome a baseline, target, accountable owner, budget, milestones, dependencies and corrective actions.
  • Limit the public corporate scorecard to approximately 20–30 meaningful measures.

  • Establish clear response and processing standards for permits, inspections, business services, bylaw concerns, records requests and common resident inquiries.
  • Report acknowledgement, processing and resolution times.

  • Move beyond online application submission to visible status, next steps, responsible departments, elapsed time and secure correspondence.
  • Give complex resident and business matters one accountable case owner.

  • Show targets, actual performance and trends over time.
  • Identify data sources and explain missed targets.
  • Archive past results so residents can track improvement.

  • Require project charters, budgets, schedules, risk registers, decision gates and formal change controls.
  • Report significant projects publicly each quarter.
  • Conduct independent reviews for unusually complex or high-risk projects.

  • Measure the complete applicant journey, not only selected internal processing periods.
  • Introduce early completeness checks, coordinated reviews and consolidated City comments.
  • Fast-track straightforward applications while assigning integrated leads to complex projects.
  • Review delayed files regularly to identify and remove recurring bottlenecks.

  • Explain what improvement residents will receive from material spending or staffing increases.
  • Show annual and five-year costs, expected results and how success will be measured.
  • Review programs periodically for effectiveness, duplication and continuing need.

  • Set procurement timelines and track total contract values, including amendments.
  • Standardize scopes, evaluations, conflict declarations and contract controls.
  • Tie grants and service agreements to defined deliverables and measurable outcomes.

  • Validate staffing, workload, vacancy, overtime and contractor data before making structural decisions.
  • Map processes and remove duplicate entry, unnecessary handoffs and low-value administrative work.
  • Use redeployment and attrition before considering other staffing changes.
  • Apply technology only with privacy, security, accessibility and human oversight.

  • Begin major reports with a one-page summary covering the decision, cost, options, risks, implementation date and success measures.
  • Publish plain language post-meeting decision summaries.
  • Maintain a searchable register of Council commitments, owners and deadlines.

  • Clearly explain what is open to public influence and what constraints apply.
  • Use the format: “You said; we considered; we changed; we did not change, and why.”
  • Show residents how their feedback affected the final decision.

  • Separate what the City controls, shares, influences or does not control.
  • Define responsibilities and funding expectations for homelessness, health care, policing, transportation and infrastructure.
  • Avoid promising municipal control over outcomes that depend on the Province, CRD, Island Health or other partners.

First 100 Days

  • Establish service, workforce, project and process baselines.
  • Define the structure of the 2027 Corporate Plan and select the main outcomes.
  • Identify the 20 highest volume or most difficult resident and business service journeys.
  • Create common standards for major project reporting.
  • Design a public dashboard with approximately 20–30 measures.
  • Launch pilot service standards and permitting improvements.
  • Establish a rolling program-review schedule.
  • Pilot plain-language Council decision summaries.
  • Publish an initial transformation report with quick wins, risks and the next 12-month plan.

36-Month Implementation

Months 0–6: Baseline and Transparency

  • Validate current performance and launch the first dashboard.
  • Establish project, program review and procurement standards.
  • Select priority services and permits for improvement.

Months 6–18: Redesign and Pilot

  • Introduce service standards, digital status tracking and improved workflows.
  • Standardize major project controls and reporting.
  • Pilot carefully governed automation and complete the first program reviews.

Months 18–36: Expand and Institutionalize

  • Extend service standards across high-volume services.
  • Integrate budgets, projects, the Corporate Plan and public reporting.
  • Rebalance staff capacity based on measured workload.
  • Publish productivity and resident-satisfaction trends.
  • Conduct an independent review of the reform program.