Council hears final CUI report

Consulting firm Stack’d presented their recommendations to City council for an updated mandate and rate regulatory framework for Chestermere Utilities Inc. (CUI).
This final report, the culmination of a review started in June 2016, laid out the implementation steps that the city needs to take to have a more transparent and comprehensible CUI mandate and rate setting process.
“We’ve been anxiously awaiting the final presentation by Stack’d since June,” said Chestermere’s Mayor Patricia Matthews.
Stack’d made four recommendations that they will work with the city and CUI to implement.
First the applicable overarching policy documents need to be updated and a unanimous shareholder’s agreement created.
Second reporting protocols that reflect council’s dual role as shareholder and rate regulator need to be established.
Third, an interim rate setting process for 2017 has to be developed. The report said that this should be created to lead toward the final desired process.
Finally, a review focused on updating and confirming key administrative and operational processes that are supported by both the CUI and city.
“It was exciting to see the recommendations,” said Matthews, “and it will be equally exciting to take the action steps.”
City staff have been asked to review and bring to council their recommendation of how to proceed to implement those action items.
Matthews expects that the staff recommendations will be brought to council in November.
She hopes Chestermere residents will read the Stack’d report on the city website and attend the meeting in November.
“We’re encouraging them to come out for the presentation by staff of the action items that are coming out of that report,” she said.
The staff presentation is not yet scheduled however Matthews said the city will heavily promote the meeting once it is scheduled.
One way residents can be sure to be alerted about the presentation is to use the Notify Me function on the city website.
Matthews said that it is important for residents to understand that there is a clear difference in the both the recommended mandate and regulatory process from what the city was operating under prior to the consultation.
“Stack’d recommendation is based on industry standards and best practices,” she said.
Matthews said that this process is a more robust process than the former rate setting framework.
“The recommendation is to align it with the…Alberta Utilities Commission,” she said.
The delivery of this report also starts the next step in the provincial review of Chestermere administration and council.
A copy of this report as well as council’s proposed response to it must be forwarded to Alberta Municipal affairs by Nov. 30.
Both the provincial review of administration and council and the hiring of the third party consultant came about after residents expressed concerns after the approval of new utility rates in February 2016.
Stack’d Consulting was chosen by council to complete the review at the June 6 meeting of council.
Matthews feels that the improved processes that the city will be implementing well help to prevent a similar situation of confusion and concern by residents.
“The bottom line for us is that we wanted to ensure we didn’t ever have a repetition of what’s happened in the past,” said Matthews, “its why we hired Stack’d as a third party consultant to be able to go through and review our past practices and make recommendations for good solid ones going forward.”
She has been happy with the review process and the results derived from it.
“We believe that Stack’d’s recommendations which are based on industry standards and best practices are going to lay out a clear set of expectations for the public and for council and for CUI going forward,” she said.