Image credit: Mel Rothenburger

By Mel Rothenburger

Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: A modest proposal for improving the citizen satisfaction survey

Apr 20, 2024 | 9:46 AM

IT WILL SOON BE TIME for the Kamloops citizen satisfaction survey, when taxpayers will have an opportunity to say what they think of their city.

The survey will be carried out in the fall and it’s an important tool for letting City Hall know what’s going well and what’s not in the Tournament Capital.

For example, the last time it was done two years ago, 64 per cent said life had gotten worse but 83 per cent said it’s still good overall.

All kinds of things are covered in the survey, such as perceptions of crime, health care, taxation and culture.

The idea is to provide council and staff with information they can use to make plans for the community.

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One thing that’s not covered, though, is what kind of a job City council is doing.

This would be very helpful to our City fathers and mothers, so I’ve devised 10 simple questions along with multiple choice answers.

If these were added to the survey, I believe they’d yield valuable insights for those in charge.

So, please read and think carefully about your answers because it’s also a test of your knowledge of civic affairs.

1. Which of the following is City council’s greatest achievement?

a. the St. Paddy’s Day manifesto.

b. Fartgate.

c. the slide show the mayor wasn’t allowed to use.

d. the truly impressive number of documents and communications that have been leaked.

2. What has been the best decision on social disorder issues?

a. not doing anything about the 48 Victoria Street West storage facility.

b. not hiring additional outreach workers.

c. Coun. Katie Neustaeter’s drugs-in-parks bylaw that can’t be enforced.

d. ordering Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson to remove the SUV that was torched on his car lot.

3. How many points of order have been raised by councillors telling the mayor he “can’t say that” because it’s confidential?

a. one.

b. 10.

c. quite a few.

d. too many to count.

4. What’s the best idea to come out of City council this term?

a. Coun. Bill Sarai’s proposal to ban non-profits from getting City grants if they criticize the council.

b. Coun. Nancy Bepple’s motion to demand an end to the war in Gaza in hopes Israel would listen.

c. the plan to hold one humongous referendum to spend a gazillion dollars on a whole bunch of new facilities at once.

d. reducing climate change funding (after all, the climate can take care of itself without our help).

5. Who at City Hall should get the most credit for promoting harmonious relations among themselves?

a. Coun. Dale Bass for suggesting knives be removed from a banquet table, apparently referring to the possibility of councillors and the mayor sitting together during a chamber of commerce AGM.

b. Coun. Bill Sarai for suggesting nobody sit with the mayor.

c. the mayor for calling Coun. Sarai “a snake.”

d. City staff for locking all council members out of non-public areas of City facilities.

6. What is the most important step taken by council to increase public engagement?

a. banning comments from the City’s Facebook page.

b. not allowing public inquiries at council meetings unless they’re to do with “matters relating to the agenda.”

c. not allowing public inquiries at all at committee of the whole meetings.

d. restricting the public from making complaints under the Code of Conduct because they were being “vexatious.”

7. What should the provincially appointed municipal advisor recommend?

a. stop yelling at each other, except maybe in the mayor’s office. With the door closed.

b. not talk to one another at all. Just raise their hands to vote on things.

c. another investigation into something. Anything. As long as it costs a lot of money.

d. install a vending machine in the mayor’s office so he can get snacks when he’s excluded from special council meetings.

8. What’s the best example of council building partnerships?

a. promising Noble Creek Irrigation System users that the City would keep the system running until 2028, then shutting it down in 2023.

b. Coun. Sarai musing about charging TNRD rural residents extra for swimming in the city’s pools and skating in its arenas; at the same meeting, Coun. Mike O’Reilly threatening to withhold a $250,000 City payment if electoral areas used surpluses to reduce a tax increase.

c. telling BC Housing it has “no interest” in a third-party audit of how B.C. Housing manages shelters and supportive housing, while routinely slagging it for how it handles housing.

d. telling off TRU and accusing it of “playing games” for wanting a say in where the bicycle-pedestrian overpass goes on Summit Drive.

9. What new punishment would be appropriate for council members who break their own code of conduct?

a. go through an entire meeting without complaining about anything the mayor says.

b. a one-month ban on using the words “bold moves” and “we’re working through the chaos and getting things done.”

c. not citing the Community Charter for at least one meeting.

d. stop telling people “we’re listening” and “we feel your pain” when they complain about illicit drug use, vandalism, crime and the homeless defecating on doorsteps.

10. If a City council meeting was a movie or TV series, what would it be called?

a. Survivor

b. Mutiny on the Bounty

c: Mission Impossible

d. Titanic

Time’s up. Please turn in your papers.

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.

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.