NEUSTAETER: Coffee shop democracy is always the best kind

This is it.

Tony Brumell — a fixture at City council meetings and anything else that smacks of civic debate — arrives, followed by councillors Arjun Singh and Bill Sarai. Singh wasn’t scheduled to attend (the session was designed for four councillors because five or more in the same room technically constitutes a quorum, meaning any discussion of council business has to be recorded as an official meeting and all the rigmarole that entails).

A few other residents, including Kehoe, arrive and the discussion moves to a bigger table at the back. Singh quickly finds himself the centre of attention in a discussion about the need for a sidewalk on Lorne Street west of the Colombo Hall.

Dave Haggard, a fiery unionist, and his neighbour Len Skakun, both residents of Park Place on Lorne, harangue him about the years-long battle to get the sidewalk, and things heat up.

“What did I say to make you think I’m not listening to you?” Singh asks Dave at one point.

“You were trying to talk over me,” retorts Dave.

Singh apologizes if that was the impression, and they move on to a more polite discussion about the railway tracks across Lorne and how they complicate the sidewalk question. Sinclair is busy on her phone doing a search and announces the sidewalk is in the City’s transportation master plan.

“We’ve been talking for the last 20 minutes and it’s already in the plan?” Singh laughs.

“It’s in the plan,” Sinclair confirms.

“We don’t need it in the plan. This is the real world,” says Skakun, echoing a letter to the editor he wrote a couple of years ago in which he said, “We need people on council who have worked in the real world and have the background to deal with the bloated bureaucracy at city hall.”

But chalk up one issue that’s been at least partially answered in “Ask a City Councillor.”

By this time, councillors Mike O’Reilly and Sadie Hunter have come in and there are a dozen people sitting at the table. Singh departs and the non-quorum rule is preserved.

There are two or three different discussions going on at any one time. One resident is worried about safety on Royal Avenue, which fronts the South Thompson beach that’s quickly being populated with the homeless of summer as the weather improves. Bylaws officers won’t go into the beach area where they congregate and police won’t respond unless there’s an emergency, she says.

“Our mental health issues aren’t being addressed at all,” Sarai says.

A Brocklehurst resident tells the councillors he’s having his own bylaws problem, finding it impossible to get any help from the City enforcing against a neighbour who has turned his yard into a storage depot for heavy equipment.

O’Reilly and Sarai commit to looking into it. O’Reilly says he’ll drive out for a look. Meanwhile, Sinclair has scribbled more than two pages of notes listing the various concerns floating up and down the table.

This is one-on-one democracy at its best. No council chambers or town hall. It’s exciting, really, this coffee shop politics, a version of kitchen table diplomacy — two hours with members of local government spending quality time with the people they serve.

Politically, the arithmetic wouldn’t add up if this was an election campaign, but it just might be the most valuable couple of hours they’ve spent all week.

As the chatter continues, Mitch and Edna are at work the counter. They’ve sold all of three cups of coffee to the participants but that’s not the point, as Mitch sees it. He’s another civic-issues buff. He also runs the busy Red Beard coffee shop a couple of doors down and sees tremendous potential in the North Shore.

The idea behind the Moustache and Go (the “Moustache” is a play on “Must Dash”) is to extend the “community concept” of business and make it comfortable for people to come in the door, a good place to talk about life and the issues of the day. He says people shouldn’t expect council to solve every problem and to work tirelessly for them on the details of every issue. They’re policy makers who nudge administrators in the right direction, he says. In the end, Mitch says, we have to remember we’re all — including politicians — just people doing our best to get by.

Haggard and Skakun take their leave. Did they find the session worthwhile and would they attend another one, I ask them?

“Absolutely,” says Dave.

“Definitely,” says Len.

Back at the table, Sinclair is still taking notes. She deems the first “Ask a City Councillor” a success and says there will definitely be a second.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

by Armchair Mayor

NEUSTAETER: Coffee shop democracy is always the best kind

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