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Glen Brown is the visionary and thought leader who coined the term “sustainable service delivery”. This way of viewing the local government sphere of responsibility changes everything about how local governments do business in an era of rapid change. “Level-of-Service is the integrator for everything that local governments do. What level of service does a community wish to provide, and what level can it afford? Everyone will have to make level-of-service choices. Establish the level-of-service that is sustainable to protect watershed health,” stated Glen Brown.

As an advocate for Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery, Wally Wells has done a public service by drawing attention to the urgent need to engage and inform elected representatives so that they truly understand “risks and consequences” associated with their core responsibility, infrastructure. “An Asset Management Plan is about what is necessary to continue providing EXISTING services at existing levels, Thus, a decision not to invest in infrastructure renewal would risk reducing or compromising EXISTING levels of service,” stated Wally Wells.

“The core document for asset management for BC local governments is Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework. The title is deliberate and important because the ‘function’ and responsibility of Municipal Councils and Regional Boards is Sustainable Service Delivery. The process to support decision making is Asset Management. The Framework provides the basis for the entire asset management process for our local governments to follow. Funding agencies, as part of funding applications, request communities to identify where they are within the asset management process using the framework,” stated Glen Brown.

“Local governments manage 60% of the physical assets in Canada on 8 cents of the tax dollar. These assets comprise the economic backbone of our communities – they are essential – and so should their management. While all local governments do asset management and financial planning, the integration needs to enable discussions with our community about level of service, required maintenance and the cost of replacement. As professionals, we owe our communities those discussions. The resilience of our communities increasingly relies on the integration and the discussions will break the poor practices through awareness,” stated Kim Fowler.

“Master drainage planning, integrated stormwater planning, and other processes at best pay lip-service to the role of the streamside protection zone within a stream system context, the condition of native vegetation and woodlands cover, and the need for restoration. Now, the Ecological Accounting Process (EAP) provides the reason to ask the question, why aren’t these factors considered and given equal weight to engineering considerations? With EAP as a foundation piece, local governments have a rationale and a metric to do business differently via multiple planning pathways,” stated Tim Pringle.

“Three decades ago, the philosophy that ‘use and conservation of land are equal values’ launched Tim Pringle on a career trajectory that has culminated with his breakthrough accomplishment in leading the EAP initiative. EAP opens ups multiple pathways for local governments to achieve the goal of ‘natural asset management’. Now, with EAP as a foundation piece, maintenance and management (M&M) of stream systems can be integrated into a Local Government Finance Strategy to tackle the Riparian Deficit,” stated Kim Stephens.

“Communities rely on a range of services such as roads, underground utilities and parks to support life-style and property enjoyment. Through taxation, these constructed commons are maintained and managed in order to ensure their availability. Institutional services such as fire protection and schools are a related kind of constructed commons. As defined by EAP, a natural commons is an ecological system that provides ecological services used by nature and the community. But the commons word means little to the average person. So, we created a visual aid to help audiences grasp the concept,” explained Tim Pringle.

“Community resilience is defined as the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations while continuing to deliver critical community services. The goal of enabling and supporting community resiliency also brings to the fore the role of land use and community planning; the very profession that develops the policy and plans that either enable or impede the resiliency we seek,” stated Christine Calihoo.

The big picture context for EAP is whether a local government has a strategy for its constructed assets. Success over the long-term depends on local government political commitment to the guiding principles of sustainable service delivery. Bridging the infrastructure funding gap for constructed and natural assets requires an intergenerational commitment. “Lack of a long-term financial plan to support asset management really forces an incremental erosion of the service level. That is why forward looking long-term financial statements are so important to inform Council decisions,” stated Christopher Paine.

How will communities ensure that streams survive as healthy ecosystems in an urban setting? This existential question defines a key challenge facing local governments in an era of weather extremes. EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, provides communities with a path forward. It is the means to inject balance into the natural asset management conversation. “We needed a measure of financial value that could be applied on stream systems generally, not just because somebody somewhere had done something somehow. And then it struck me, the BC Assessment database is the lynchpin for financial valuation,” stated Tim Pringle.