As a provincial capital tucked far away from other major metropolitan centres, I always had a feeling that the movers and shakers of Regina had little idea how to run a business or a bureaucracy, and relied both on their authority and the supposition that people in Regina didn’t know any better to not make the extra effort to, you know, do things right.
Like the City of Regina,. for example. Despite the administration’s desire to deal with people as ‘taxpayers’ (implying that the more taxes you pay, the better treatment you’ll get from City Hall) or ‘consumers’ (implying that the only choice you have is to pay for fees or not to — which isn’t the way a democracy runs), the city’s satisfaction level with the services the provide is about as high as you would get from, say, Wal-Mart.
Your latest example? What happens when the city doesn’t upgrade its servers and then opens on-line registration for its leisure centres’ activities. If people feel City Hall won’t listen to their complaints, there’s always Facebook, in this day and age.