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Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: City council’s strange approach to writing a Code of Conduct

Feb 18, 2023 | 6:35 AM

EVERY CITY COUNCIL should have a Code of Conduct but the Kamloops council’s approach to it is perplexing.

At this week’s Committee of the Whole meeting, corporate officer Maria Mazzotta presented a report on how to update the existing Code, with a recommendation that the committee “provide input to administration on potential updates to the Council Code of Conduct, and that an updated draft Code of Conduct be presented to Council for its consideration.”

Instead, giving scarcely a word of input, council sent the matter back to administration with instructions to present the council with a bylaw.

So, instead of taking control of their own behaviour, they turned the matter over to staff to come up with a plan.

What should have been an instructive discussion began well enough when Mazzotta issued a friendly challenge to councillors, complete with a slide of Aretha Franklyn singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

How, she asked the council, would each of them define “respect”? It was more like a workshop approach than a council meeting, but she was clearly trying to make it a fun, non-threatening exercise.

One after one, they chimed in, beginning with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, who said respect was treating people the way you’d like to be treated. The word “trust” came up frequently as councillors spoke.

But then, a strange thing happened. Waiting until the other eight members had offered their comments, Coun. Dale Bass suddenly cut things off with a motion that staff simply prepare a draft proposal because, she said, council needs to trust staff to do the work council doesn’t have the time to do. That is, too much reading.

Remarkably, ignoring the fact the purpose of a Committee of the Whole is to discuss important issues in depth, nobody questioned this offload. So, staff will now write up a new Code of Conduct for consideration in May without any prior effective input from the people they’re writing it for. Instead of, as the report suggested, council recommending “specific elements” for inclusion.

Nope, let administration do the work all on its own and then council will say yay or nay.

That’s backwards.

Let’s back up to what happened when that same approach was taken to the current highly flawed Code of Conduct approved last year.

Drawn up by staff based largely on wording from a working group that included the Union of B.C. Municipalities and Municipal Affairs Ministry, it got the seal of approval over the protests of then-councillors Arjun Singh and Denis Walsh.

The two dissenters found it overly vague yet prescriptive at the same time. For example, under the Code, council members aren’t supposed to deal directly with department heads; they’re supposed to go through the CAO only. That, of course, is impractical in the real world.

Of more concern is that it prohibits councillors from making comments that reflect “negatively” on other council members or staff. So, technically, any member of council who’s critical of a council decision or something said by a colleague could find himself or herself the subject of a complaint filed by an offended fellow councillor.

So much for free speech.

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

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