ROTHENBURGER: If you liked council’s first year, just imagine the next three

Councillors talk a good game and deliver turmoil. They shroud themselves in secret meetings and investigations and call it all “bold moves” as they procrastinate on the big stuff.

At times, doing things wrong seems to come naturally. I’m pretty sure it’s the only government in history that ever made headlines over fart jokes.

Let’s compare what they promised to what they’ve accomplished. To be sure, there was confident, and maybe naïve, talk of great things to come.

Unquestionably, street safety was the big issue raised by the public during the election campaign. “The number one issue of concern for people I talk to is the social disorder on our streets,” said candidate Nancy Bepple.

“There is not one cause to the disorder, but as a community, finding solutions needs to be a priority.”

What those solutions should be weren’t well defined by the five candidates for mayor and 23 candidates for councillor, and the winners certainly haven’t come up with much.

The only initiative of note with respect to social disorder has come from Coun. Katie Neustaeter and her bylaw banning illicit drug consumption in parks and other public places. However, the bylaw has little chance of coming into effect since new provincial rules will make it largely irrelevant.

Homelessness? What council has done is to sideline an opportunity to move the 48 Victoria Street West storage facility for the homeless to a safer location, turn down hiring more outreach workers, and miss out on a chance to help displaced homeless find their way back to their own communities.

Margot Middleton’s campaign platform included “a mechanism to relocate people to other cities and possibly other provinces” where they could access services but when the mayor proposed such a mechanism all he got was a lengthy debate over the procedure for shelving his motion until funding is identified.

Middleton also promised to “work with the mayor and council to advocate for not building or opening new homeless shelters and will work to disband or relocate ones being used on a temporary basis.”

Flash forward to today — the scramble for shelters continues and nothing much has changed in the approach to housing the unhoused.

On the plus side, the concept of a sobering centre has been renewed. And City taxpayers will take over the cost of the Clean Team and CSO outreach programs. There’s been some other work around the edges.

There were, of course, a lot of other issues that were touted: the economy, the housing crisis, climate change, the performing arts centre.

The latter is still just a hope. However, the new council has established what it calls a Build Kamloops program, along with its own committee, to look at a plan to construct new public amenities, and the PAC (on the books as a priority for 20 years) is among them. Other potential projects include new sports and recreation facilities.

Another important issue raised in the campaign got some attention but clearly not enough: getting along.

“Too many councils become divided and waste time focusing on their internal grievances rather than presenting a unified voice,” said incumbent Dale Bass. “… Be respectful. Accept you might be wrong.”

Katie Neustaeter was also big on cohesiveness and civility. “… The more diverse the thought in the room the more likely that we can achieve the best result,” she stated during the campaign.

“Diversity of approach and opinion is not a problem to be solved, but rather a gift to be embraced, no matter how much it may not feel like it when sharpening iron against iron.”

Neustaeter, of course, has since distinguished herself with her very public disagreements with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, including the well-known March 17 declaration, and the lawsuit filed against her by the mayor.

Bill Sarai? “It is very healthy to agree to disagree in a healthy manner, especially in council chambers,” was what he said a year ago. Sadly, he’s often forgotten his own advice inside those chambers.

And who will ever forget Stephen Karpuk — who vowed to bring a fresh perspective to council — and his Fartgate fiasco?

Middleton, too, called for civility during the election campaign. “We are a democracy and all members of council, and the mayor, deserve our respect. We may agree to disagree but there is no place for personal attacks. We debate an idea/concept, not the person making it.”

As it has turned out, she’s the only one of the elected councillors who has lived up to her commitment on the respectful-disagreement score. The rest have failed miserably, opting instead for confrontation, at least where the mayor is concerned.

In fact, it was Middleton who, respectfully, asked for a motion to ask the Municipal Affairs Ministry to send someone in to help sort out the dysfunction.

Another potential bright spot is that councillors, having earlier rejected the simple and quick way of doing town halls, finally came up with a complicated series of “community conversations.”

A comment by Hamer-Jackson during the campaign is particularly interesting a year later. “The people that are running right now, I don’t see them being leaders. They’ve been in politics, they’ve had four years to do this.”

Being a leader requires having followers. With three years left of this four-year term, he has yet to find them, at least among the councillors.

But if you liked the first year, imagine what can happen in the next three.

Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. 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 Pattison Media.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: If you liked council’s first year, just imagine the next three

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