By Armchair Mayor

City council — throw the bums out, or steady as she goes?

Jun 3, 2017 | 5:00 AM

KAMLOOPS — City councils come in cycles, and Kamloops is about to start a new one.

Those cycles consist of long stretches of stability followed by dramatic change. The current stability has lasted almost 20 years, and it will end in 2018.

I define stability as minor turnover from one term to the next, with maybe a new mayor coming into a vacant chair, a vacant council seat or two being filled, and maybe an incumbent defeated.

Dramatic change comes in two ways: when there happens to be a lot of vacancies due to attrition, or when voters feel the need for a shake-up and say so with their ballots. The latter happens rarely because Kamloops voters are wary of major changes, which involves putting in office people they usually don’t know as well as the ones who are already there.

The last real shake-up at City Hall came in 1999, when six out of nine council members were new. What’s coming up this time is shaping up to be a little of each — part attrition, part shakeup.

Boogie The Bridge

Boogie The Bridge Event Information

Apr 19, 2024

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: A fond farewell to the airwaves from the Armchair Mayor

10m ago

SOUND OFF

SOUND OFF: Short-term rental rules coming into effect in British Columbia

19h ago

The current process of regime change will actually begin with this September’s by-election but won’t be completed until the general civic election roughly a year and half from now.

How big will the change be? The number could add up to six, the same as it did in 1999.

There will be at least two new councillors and one new mayor after the by-election, though the new mayor might be an old councillor. The other three changes could come from at least one retirement and a couple of defeated incumbents.

Issues, of course, mean something, and will have an effect on who’s in and who’s out. Kevin Krueger’s entry into the by-election sets up an obvious right-left schism and he’s already all but declared war on some incumbents.

To borrow from an anti-Ajaxer by the name of Donovan Cavers, if Krueger and Christian don’t support Ajax I will eat my shorts. If both are elected, it won’t make for a re-alignment, since if Peter Milobar were still there and didn’t eventually support Ajax I would have had shorts for dinner as well.

On the other hand, if Mayor Cynthia Ross Friedman takes office, Kamloops would clearly have an anti-Ajax council.

But the Ajax question — at least as far as council’s stand on it is concerned — will hopefully be pretty much settled in the next short while.

Besides which, the by-election should in no way be considered or expected to be a referendum on Ajax or anything else. The current council wasn’t elected based on Ajax and neither will the new one. We don’t elect politicians based on single issues, we elect them for the kind of overall job they’ll do.

If, for example, all Krueger is going to talk about is incumbent councillors he disagrees with on wine in liquor stores, nobody will care.

If candidates are going to talk about a vision for Kamloops — one that hasn’t been at all obvious during the past couple of terms of council — then they’ll pay attention. If the mayoralty candidates are going to drone on about day-to-day business and getting the job done and tip-toeing around sensitive issues, it’s going to be one boring by-election. But if they’ve got ideas, real ideas, there will be something to talk about.

Which brings us back to my original point — do Kamloops voters want a new sense of energy, change, maybe even youth, on their council, or do they want to move cautiously forward, playing it safe? Cycle, or recycle?

Will they fill those half dozen spots in the by-election and general election with people they think will do much the same thing, only do it better? There will be no shortage of folks offering to do that.

Or will they opt for the path less travelled, be willing to give some new faces a try, be prepared to empower them to make some mistakes? Greater risk, greater reward.

That’s the real issue. Not any single project, not the stale old stuff about “finishing what’s been started,” or jobs, jobs, jobs, or “I’ve got the experience.”

What about collaboration, consensus seeking, community building, passion? How about creative thinkers, candidates who are true students of municipal politics for the best of reasons, rather than people who will run for anything that’s available?

How about vision?