Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Chad Klassen

CITY HALL

City council returns, mayor present for low-key meeting on Tuesday

Dec 13, 2022 | 4:43 PM

KAMLOOPS — If you were living under a rock this last week in Kamloops, Tuesday’s city council meeting seemed like everything was back to normal — and at the council table, it was.

In the background, though, there is still a legal battle between Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson and ASK Wellness, which has accused him of defamation.

However, Tuesday’s council meeting featured a delegation from Tourism Kamloops with year-end numbers and The Mustard Seed Kamloops, which is set to open an emergency shelter at the Kamloops Alliance Church starting on Wednesday evening if temperatures drop below -10.

“One thing we promised is we’d listen to [citizens’] concerns and we did listen,” noted managing director Kelly Thomson, relaying to council the feedback The Mustard Seed received from the neighbours around the Alliance Church. “We got some people that were very angry coming in the door, but that was okay. As we talked, they began to understand how we do things. It’s a little different than some of the others and we look to build a relationship with the people.”

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After hearing about The Mustard Seed’s planning and preparation to ensure the shelter is as smooth as possible, council was complimentary.

“I used to have an expression I used in business, which was ‘proper planning prevents poor performance,'” noted councillor Kelly Hall. “There’s not going to be any poor performance here, so I just tip my hat to you and your team.”

Mike O’Reilly added, “While I’m sure you didn’t make everyone in the neighbourhood 100 per cent happy, what you did was you got that social license by taking this extra time to do the public engagement, so for that I thank you and applaud you. I hope it will be able to be used by other agencies going forward.”

The mayor was tame when addressing The Mustard Seed. Hamer-Jackson, who promised during the election to turn the shelter system around, inquired about more outreach workers at these Mustard Seed shelters.

“I was actually down at the Yacht Club at one time where a gentleman wanted to get back to Chilliwack and I’m just wondering if we looked at working on more outreach workers in the area,” said Hamer-Jackson. “Then when they’re closed, where are they going because it’s still cold out.”

Later in the meeting, there was a question asked by a citizen, a stated Hamer-Jackson supporter, about the issue of the recent closed door meetings.

“We ask council to consider going into a closed meeting. Our section’s taken right out of the Community Charter. We don’t make up the language. The language is in provincial statute,” said CAO David Trawin.

Councillor Katie Neustaeter added, “When we ask for a closed meeting, it’s extraordinarily clear to me that there are three acceptable opportunities or necessities for us to do that. One of them is [human resources], one of them is land considerations, and one is them is when we need council from legal to advise us so we can protect the taxpayers any risk that might be coming before them.”

Trawin requested a closed door meeting, he says unrelated to the two last week, for Jan. 17. It was passed unanimously by council.