Dawson Has Been a Learning Experience

by Dan Davidson

It may sound like a cliché, but Dawson Trustee Ray Hayes begins his reflections after two months working on the Dawson City file by calling it an education.

"I've been here now for the better part of two full months. I think I came in on the third or fourth of May. It's been a bit of a learning experience ... and a real eye opener for me as to some of the things the city's involved in."

Dawson’s Trustee administrator, Ray Hayes, says he is enjoying his work here but has found it a learning experience as well. Photo by Dan Davidson

One of those surprises was the city run internet and cable television system. After two months on site, Hayes feels he understands just why those services (especially the television) are run by the town, but it has still been an exercise in frustration to deal with them.

"The wheels seemed to come off the day that I drove into town," he reflected.

It's true that internet and television services have been buggy for some of May and a lot of June. Some parts of the town have been locked out, others have had sporadic service for e-mail, internet access, or television, either singly or in combination.

Hayes says he felt sometimes as if some people believed it was happening on purpose.

"Somebody drew that link the other day... but I'm telling you, if I wanted to sabotage the system I couldn't do it. I don't have those kinds of skills."

Technical support for the system comes from Polarcom in Whitehorse, and Hayes says it has been frustrating dealing with long distance advice. Techs come to Dawson and fix one problem and then something else pops up a couple of days later.

This is on a system where the biggest problems to date have been caused by people using networked file sharing programs for downloading and uploading music, video and networked game file. Hayes said that former city manager Scott Coulson had had a pretty good handle on this problem and that he plans to adopt the same policy with bandwidth hogs in the future: a warning and then, perhaps, a cut-off.

One of the other challenges has been the planned relocation of the fibre optic lines at the south end of town as Yukon Energy removes its old poles and transfers all cables to the new ones from the Mayo-Dawson transmission line project.

That transfer is costing the city some money, probably about $30,000, which had not been budgeted for in former Supervisor Andre Carrel's last budget, which has become the working document (though constantly under revision) for Hayes and Chief Administrative Officer David Skidd.

"We're in a different world than when Andre was here," Hayes said, indicating that some of that report's assumptions just don't hold up in the light of day to day operations.

Dawson is currently running with a provisional budget which Hayes and Skidd hope to have refined to a realistic document by the end of the summer. By about the same time, the detailed forensic audit, which has been under way for the last month, should be finished.

There have not, as yet, been any discussions related to Carrel's recommendation that the town should receive $3.5 million in debt relief. His final report indicated that no town or council could have overcome the debt load placed upon it by the terms of the Capital Funding Agreement, of which Carrel was very critical.

At this point, however, Hayes and Skidd are trying to run the town on the bare bones budget they were left to work with, financed by a line of credit that is already sitting at close to $300,000, and both agree that one of their major tasks has been to persuade people in town and, oddly enough, within YTG, that they just don't have funds for discretionary projects right now.

Hayes says that some of the reactions from the territorial government do serve to underline the incorrect assumptions that are made in the capital about how the rural communities function.

Hayes says he had been aware of this from his days heading up the Liquor Corporation, but his present job has reminded him of this and more. He's spending a lot of time trying to explain to others how the town works and why, and has no time for the argument made in the April Carrel report that Dawson was top heavy with employees.

Everyone he's working with presently is doing great work, he says, and both he and Skidd indicate they really couldn't get far without the staff's efforts and cooperation.

Dawson to Be Conference Example for “when things go wrong”

by Dan Davidson

No one is Dawson's present administration is overjoyed to hear that the town's problems will be on the agenda at a conference on municipal government being held in Vancouver on July 19 and 20.

Called "Best Practices in Performance Measurement for Municipalities", the conference has been set up to deal with new requirements the British Columbia government has established for its towns and cities, a procedure called Progress Reporting.

Chairing the conference is Andre Carrel, who recently ended a seven month appointment as the financial supervisor for the City of Dawson.

Among the subtopics in his July 19 keynote address one can find the following heading: "When Things Go Wrong: a consultant's experience in Dawson City, Yukon."

"This is a scary thought," said Trustee Ray Hayes, "because I'm not convinced that at this point that Andre had a really in-depth handle on what was going on here ... I'm trying to be really diplomatic.

"He shouldn't be using any of that information without our approval."

"If he was doing that as a contract," said Chief Administrative Officer David Skidd, "that's not something he should do."

Carrel made a point during his tenure of indicating that he was not in any way bound to keep his thoughts and conclusions confidential. Neither his contract, nor those currently in force for Hayes and Skidd, contain any restrictions of that nature in written form.

Hayes produced his own contract at that point and agreed that Carrel's would have been similar.

"I find that unnerving," Skidd said.

"The minister has a degree of trust," said Hayes, "that I'm not going to go out there on the street spilling secrets.

"I would say, if I were asked to give an example, that I could talk about some of the things that have happened here without saying where it was."

In any event, the forensic audit which may tell the full story of what went wrong with Dawson's finances is still under way and is not expected to be finished before the end of the summer.

Both men felt it was premature to make Dawson any kind of a case study until after that report has been digested.

Celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the Dempster Highway were held over the third weekend in June, first at the Dempster Corner and later at the Arctic Circle. Thanks to Ed Vos for this photo coverage.