Jesse Ketler: a progressive voice on a supportive council

Jesse Ketler: a progressive voice on a supportive council

Cumberland Councillor Jesse Ketler championed social procurement in her first term, and now she’s got more “crazy ideas” for homelessness, energy sources and fire halls that she hopes to pursue in a second term

 

Jesse Ketler is seeking a second term on the Cumberland Village Council because the last four years have shown her how much can be accomplished with a functional council, and how much more there is to do.

Ketler, who has a masters of science degree in bioresource engineering from McGill University, likes to think long-term and out of the box.

“I feel lucky that the council has supported my sometimes crazy ideas,” she told Decafnation. “And that my introduction to politics has been among respectful councillors.”

Ketler brought the idea of leveraging the Village’s major expenditures to obtain community benefits — a concept known as social procurement. She discovered it while living in Scotland and how it could work at the local government level during conversations with Sandra Hamilton, a social procurement specialist living in Comox.

Cumberland became the first local government in Canada to adopt a social procurement policy, and in its first two years has produced multiple improvements for the village.

What is social procurement? Read about it here.

Cumberland’s success with social procurement has resulted in the creation of a province-wide Social Procurement Hub, to be located in Victoria, that will launch in October and provide resources and templates of policy enacting bylaws to help other B.C. municipalities get on board.

Now, Ketler has some new “crazy ideas” for her second term.

She wants the village to explore the possibility of using the old Cumberland coal mines as a heat exchange system to service commercial and residential buildings. Nanaimo and other cities across Canada, including a similar-sized village in Nova Scotia, have tapped into geothermal energy.

“We already have the most expensive part of geothermal energy creation, the coal mines,” she said. “My goal for the next term is to hire a consultant to study its feasibility.”

FURTHER READING: For more interviews with candidates, go to our Elections 2018 page

She also wants to initiate a Ecological Asset Management program that assigns monetary values to its green infrastructure — parks, waterways, forests, etc. — and create management plans for them like the village’s other tangible assets.

Ketler isn’t afraid to nudge the council toward positions she holds alone, such as including multi-use housing on the second floor of the proposed new fire hall. Other communities have made this unique combination of uses, she says, including one that located a women’s domestic violence shelter in a fire department building.

Ketler chairs the village’s Homelessness and Affordable Housing Committee and has served on the Comox Valley coalition to End Homelessness since its inception, which she calls “an amazing story.”

She takes pride that it was Cumberland’s 77 percent yes-vote that tipped the 2014 Homelessness Support Service referendum in favor of an affordable housing tax. The final overall CVRD vote was 53 percent in favor.

She believes the village is close to completing a deal for supportive housing units, and a possible four-story, 24-unit building with retail on the street level that would provide affordable small-sized apartments. The latter project is still under discussion over parking requirements.

Ketler urges village voters to approve a referendum on this year’s ballot that would authorize the municipality to borrow $4.4 million, which she says is needed to fund provincially-required improvements to its $9 million sewage treatment plant.

The village has been out of compliance with provincial sewage treatment standards for a decade and is at risk of being assessed large fines if they don’t upgrade soon.

“The sewer project is already a success story,” Ketler said. “When the South Sewer Project failed last year, the engineers said we couldn’t go it alone — but we have found a solution, and a green one.”

The village has an approved plan to upgrade its existing lagoon system, adding UV treatment and ultimately a reed bed that would clean the effluent of pharmaceuticals and to the Greater Exposure Potential (GEP) standard. That means the effluent could be used for stream augmentation and other purposes, such as agriculture.

And Ketler is quick to point out that the village’s plan to meet and exceed the provincial sewage treatment standard will cost only half as much as the failed 2016 CVRD South Sewer proposal would have cost Cumberland homeowners.

Read the village’s Factsheet about the referendum question here

Recently, Ketler introduced her second successful resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities. The first was to create the Social Procurement Hub.

Her new resolution, which she presented to the UBCM annual convention last week and was approved by delegates, asks the province to not reduce income assistance for people who enter recovery programs. The loss of 50 percent of their income subsidy puts people at risk of losing their housing.

Ketler and her husband moved to the Valley in 2007 and to Cumberland in 2009. They have two children.

 

Cumberland leads Canada, uses existing purchasing to impact society

Cumberland leads Canada, uses existing purchasing to impact society

PHOTO: Cumberland Mayor Leslie Baird at Tarbells on Dunsmuir Avenue

 

Around the world, the criteria for how to spend public money has shifted toward achieving a community’s social and economic values, in addition to getting the best value. The Village of Cumberland is leading the way for Canada, along with Comox resident Sandra Hamilton 

 

Comox Valley governments spend more than $100 million every year to purchase goods and services. The criteria for deciding from whom to make those purchases has been historically based on the most fiscally responsible option.

But in other parts of the world that way of thinking has shifted toward spending taxpayers’ dollars more strategically. Specifically, to not only get the best value, but to also provide social benefits.

It’s a concept called social procurement, using dollars the government was going to spend anyway to drive social change and economic development.

Canada has lagged the rest of the world in adopting social procurement, but not the Village of Cumberland.

Cumberland is the first Canadian municipality to incorporate a social procurement framework into its purchasing policy.

And it’s the first Canadian government body to receive certification from Buy Social Canada, an organization devoted to “bringing socially driven purchasers and social enterprise suppliers together … to generate social benefits to communities across the country.”

The village can already point to several community improvements directly attributable to social procurement. And Cumberland’s success has reverberated up and down Vancouver Island, across the province and into eastern Canada.

But for Cumberland Financial Officer Michelle Mason the blessings of leading a nation have come with a bit of a burden. Since the Village Council adopted social procurement in November of 2016, she has been inundated with calls from other B.C. and Canadian cities, including Toronto and Vancouver, seeking information about the policy.

“Most often, the first question is: What is this?” she said.

To answer that question, Mason has also travelled widely around the province making presentations about Cumberland’s nation-leading policy as more communities start to realize the benefits of social procurement. She recently addressed the annual convention of the B.C. Government Financial Officers Association.

The importance of Mason’s role in educating other municipalities about social procurement has inspired a group of Island mayors to envision a Social Procurement Hub that would take her work to the next level.

FURTHER READING: Island mayors work together to create Community Benefit Hub

Cumberland leading Canada

While living in Scotland in 2012/2013, Cumberland Councillor Jesse Kelter observed the Scottish government wrestle with the idea of leveraging public spending to create community benefits. She was there with her husband, who had a temporary work assignment, and her children.

She remembers reading the newspapers about the debate and thinking, “this is about building better relationships with our suppliers, making it more than just a business transaction about price,” she said. “It’s about building a better community together.”

Her understanding of how social procurement could work for local government came from a conversation she had at a Christmas party with Sandra Hamilton.

Councillor Jesse Kelter

After Kelter was elected to public office in the fall of 2014, she posed the idea of adding social values into the village’s purchasing policy during the council’s 2015 Future Priorities session.

“It was an easy sell to council,” she remembers. “And staff were very receptive.”

Cumberland Mayor Leslie Baird was on board immediately. She had taken a similar idea to an unreceptive council in 2011 .

It took another year and some outside expert help from Comox resident Sandra Hamilton to help draft Canada’s first social procurement framework, but it all came together when the village updated its purchasing policy in November of 2016.

“Sandra played an initial role early in the development of her social consulting business,” Baird said. “And we were fortunate staff was so supportive. It took all of us coming together to make it happen.”

Hamilton, a United Kingdom native now living in Comox, is Canada’s first social MBA and a public sector social procurement consultant working with all three levels of government.

Scotland has since become the world’s first country to make social procurement a law.

What is social procurement?

The Village of Cumberland has a special page on its website devoted to its social procurement policy, where it introduces the concept this way:

“Social procurement leverages the public procurement process for goods and services, to advance positive economic, workforce, and social development outcomes. Social procurement blends financial and social considerations in public sector purchasing ….”

That’s a lot of words, but the rationale is simple: provide social value for the money a government spends. It’s an invitation for suppliers to advance a community’s social and economic goals through the tendering and procurement process.

FURTHER READING: Village of Cumberland’s social procurement website page

Mayor Baird puts it more directly.

“Our major suppliers are not from Cumberland, so our village doesn’t benefit from the volunteering, sponsorships and all the other wonderful community services they donate in their hometowns,” she said. “So what we’re doing is leveraging our spending to receive some of that community benefit.”

How it works in practice

When evaluating bids for a Village of Cumberland contract, staff and elected officials consider the usual criteria of quality, price and environmental issues, but now add a fourth component: social.

Bidders must meet certain social values determined by the Village Council. They include a living wage evaluation and apprenticeship opportunities for residents of the village who are at-risk youth, aboriginal people, women, newcomers to Canada or retiring veterans and people transitioning into new careers.

Community Benefit Clauses (CBCs) valued at between 5 percent to 15 percent of the total contract may also be added. You can read the list of goals that a CBC should address here.

The Sutton lane multi-use path project

When the local J.R. Edgett company won the contract for separating wastewater and stormwater pipes along Dunsmuir Avenue, it discussed possible CBCs with village staff.

At the time, the village was trying to build a BMX bike jump park next to its skate park. Edgett offered to utilize anticipated down time of equipment and labor already onsite for the pipeline project to provide the fill and finish the jump park.

When Edgett was also hired to build a new bike lane for mountain bikers to travel safely from the Cumberland Recreation Institute parking lot down to the main entrance into the MTB trails, they also contributed to the building of trails in the Cumberland Community Forest.

Councillor Kelter and CFO Mason point out that the policy is not prescriptive to suppliers. They are allowed autonomy to be creative about offering a community benefit, but must meet at least two goals to be considered.

“It’s like we say, here are our goals, tell us how you can help us achieve some them without affecting your price,” Mason said. “Vendors know their business better than we do, and they’re creative.”

Mason said sometimes a company needs temporary employees for the job, so they offer to hire qualified Cumberland residents. Or, the company is from Vancouver and they have to rent apartments for their workers, so they get credit for what they’re already doing.

Benefits for community and contractors

Council members and staff worried that fewer vendors would bid on Cumberland projects after the social procurement policy was adopted. It turned out to be a needless worry.

The village’s last tender for its new water supply UV treatment plant attracted eight bidders, considered a healthy number by Operations Manager Rob Crisfield.

The main concern expressed by the construction industry is for consistency in the Request for Proposal process. Adding a social component to the RFP means a five to 10 page document, which can be daunting to suppliers.

The Island Social Procurement Hub would address this issue, and Financial Officier Mason has been working on creating competitive bidding templates to make it easier on vendors.

But Mayor Baird says social procurement policies are really protections for local contractors against globalization.

“All governments are open to global bids when the spendf reaches a certain dollar level,” she said. “But what will a vendor from far away do for our community?”

Baird speculates that social procurement policies have spread so quickly throughout Europe and Australia because it’s a “means of protecting our own workers.”

Sandra Hamilton

Before helping Cumberland write its policy, Sandra Hamilton worked as the director of marketing for The Vancouver Sun, and owned and published BC Woman Magazine.

Sandra Hamilton

But when she later acted as the business manager for John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, her mind was opened to the potential for social procurement. She was engaged in the Vancouver Olympics effort to include social criteria into its purchasing policies.

“For example, we awarded the floral contract to a company that offered to train inmates at the Women’s Transition Society Prison as florists during their contract period,” Hamilton said. “Half of them are still working as florists today.”

That’s when it clicked for her. Why not add social values into all taxpayer contracts, and align procurement with each government body’s policy objectives?

Hamilton has since earned the nation’s first social MBA and has helped draft both B.C.’s (Cumberland) and Alberta’s (Fort McMurray) first social procurement policies.

FURTHER READING: Sandra Hamilton’s website

She now speaks across the country, and is recognized as one of the nation’s leading social procurement experts. She was Canada’s nominee to speak about social procurement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) symposium in Geneva last February. In March she spoke on the topic at the Canadian Construction Conference in Mexico.

On a local level, Hamilton was the project lead for the FEED initiative through North Island College to get food grown by Comox Valley farmers into local institutions, such as the Comox Valley Hospital.

“Tax dollars drive our economy and shapes out communities,” she said. “But governments are still procuring and buying like they did 30-40 years ago — that’s the change I’m driving for.”

What’s next

The City of Victoria, Town of Qualicum Beach and City of Campbell River are working together on a pilot project to design and develop a standardized approach to adding social value into infrastructure projects.

The Social Procurement Hub will soon solicit for an employee to travel the province sharing information from Cumberland and other governments and helping municipal governments to establish their own policies.

FURTHER READING: The United Nations global review of sustainable public procurement

 

Cumberland UBCM resolution set the stage for a social hub

Cumberland UBCM resolution set the stage for a social hub

PHOTO: Jesse Kelter presents resolution B76 at the 2017 UBCM conference.

Vancouver Island mayors are working together and with the construction industry to ease the transition to a new local government procurement process that includes the achievement of a community’s social and economic goals with a community benefit hub

 

While the Village of Cumberland was the first Canadian municipality to implement social procurement, the program is spreading quickly to other BC cities.

The City of Vancouver expects to adopt its policy before the end of this year, and the City of Victoria has been moving toward full-scale social procurement since 2015.

And Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps has been a major player in a group of eight Vancouver Island mayors who have been meeting every quarter for the past two years. And they have worked closely with the Vancouver Island Construction Association.

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps

One of the results of their work was to develop a proposal for a Social Procurement Hub.

“What we’ve heard from industry is that they want a coordinated approach (to social procurement),” she told Decafnation in a telephone interview. “They want predictability and consistency in the tendering process.”

The hub would provide templates for municipalities to use in their procurement process, as well as education and expertise for municipal staff as the public sector pivots to community benefits.

The hub got a boost when Cumberland Councillor Jesse Kelter put forward a resolution at the 2016 meeting of the Association of Vancouver Island Coast Communities to advance social procurement in the local government sector, and to create a hub for education and expertise. It passed overwhelmingly. And was subsequently supported at the province-wide Union of B.C. Municipalities.

Victoria has commited $50,000 for two years to fund the hub and the town of Qualicum Beach is applying for a $50,000 provincial grant.

The idea behind the hub is to prove the concept of social procurement works in a wide variety of geographic locations.

“It’s a two-year incubation period,” Helps said. “We’ll find out what’s working, and what’s not working with industry, and adjust.”

The hub would be administred and located in Victoria, but with satellite offices in Qualicum Beach and Campbell River.

Helps said the mayors group hopes to put out a contract for one hub employee who will work with industry and local governments to learn, share experiences and move social procurement forward collaboratively.

The group’s next meeting is in July at Qualicum Beach.

Comox resident Sandra Hamilton, one of Canada’s leading experts on social procurement, has been advising the mayors group.

FURTHER READING: Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps’ task force action plan on social procurement; City of Vancouver working paper on social procurement