One evening of niceties, then the blood-letting begins

Published in The Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008

With pomp and circumstance, the 2008-2011 Kamloops City council will be sworn in Monday evening. Many niceties will be exchanged, and there will be fine words about maintaining the momentum, challenges ahead, and working together for the betterment of Kamloops.

The blood-letting begins Tuesday.

Reserving one night for pleasantries is a good thing. And pleasant it will be. The new members of council, under instructions to show up by 6:15, will assemble out on the Interior Savings Centre concourse and, at 7 p.m., be marshalled up and piped into the Sports Action Lounge.

Deputy corporate officer Cindy Kennedy will call the meeting to order, O Canada will be sung, and Rev. Bruce Comrie will do the invocation.

There are three speeches at inaugural meetings of council. The first will be given by outgoing Mayor Terry Lake, who will be allowed to talk about all the great things he and his council have accomplished. He’ll then say what a fine group the new council is, and wish them well.

Mr. Justice Robert Powers, after swearing in the new council, will address the gathering and likely say something about the new council’s duties to serve the public.

After accepting the gown and chain of office from Lake (given comparative girths and heights, it could be an interesting exchange), it’s the new mayor’s turn. If he’s true to form, Peter Milobar probably won’t take long to thank the outgoing mayor and councillors, and to talk a little about what he expects the priorities of the new council to be.

Then, it’s adjournment and picture time, after which the chosen few in the audience who have been invited to a reception move upstairs to the Rivers Room for drinks and appies.

Next day, things get interesting. That’s when the mayor reveals his intentions on the most important issue of the new council’s term in office — seating arrangements.

He has options. He could draw names from a hat. He could stick with the practice of the last couple of councils and determine seating according to how councillors placed in the polls. Or, he could do it alphabetically.

Another method has been broached: seniority. That would mean councillors Wallace, O’Fee and DeCicco would get first pick.

The most coveted seat is to the left of the mayor. It’s the closest to the coffee station a few steps down the hallway connecting council chambers to the mayor’s office.

Next is to his right. Still within the mayor’s peripheral vision whenever you want to wave to get attention, pass a note or even whisper something in his ear.

Nobody wants either of the seats at the end of the horseshoe, which are regarded as akin to being lost in the backwoods while everyone else is downtown. (Although, the one to the right is handy for chatting with City Hall staff, who sit at the end of chambers facing council.) 

Milobar isn’t saying how he’s going to do it, but he guarantees not everyone will be happy. He’s not saying who he’s going to appoint to various committees, either.

The main appointment, the plum, is out of his hands — the Thompson Nicola Regional District board of directors.

Based on population, the City is entitled to five directors on the board of the TNRD. It’s more sought-after than any other committee job because it’s just so darned rewarding working in cooperation with other municipalities and electoral areas on important projects and issues for the betterment of the entire region.

That, and it pays a tidy annual stipend of $6,700, raising the annual pay of City councillors who serve on the RD board to roughly $30,000, one-third tax free. It will boost Milobar’s pay to about $86,000 a year, also a third tax free.

By law, the City’s reps on the TNRD must be decided on by council as a whole. In the old days, the mayor would present a list, and council would rubber-stamp it. Now, though, an actual vote is taken among council members, similar to how the chair of the school board is picked.

If you’re thinking this process is about who will best serve the interests of the City regionally or who has the best concept of regional government or anything like that, forget it. This is a blood sport.

For the past two weeks, incumbent council members have been quietly lobbying each other and forming alliances to get themselves elected to the regional board.

The previous appointees have the inside track. That would be Milobar, John O’Fee, Pat Wallace and Jim Harker. Unless the sky falls in, they will all vote for each other, but they need a fifth member of the alliance to ensure their success.

Since Lake is no longer in the picture, that fifth vote has to be recruited. Fourth-term councillor John DeCicco and second-term councillor Tina Lange would both like a shot.

DeCicco has served on the RD board in the past but got tossed, and has wanted back in ever since. Lange didn’t signal her intentions until early this week.

Where does that leave the newbies? Being unfamiliar with the way this works, they’re running late. Neither Denis Walsh nor Nancy Bepple has made any moves towards getting support, though both would love the chance. 

Marg Spina as the other possibility, but word is she hasn’t put her name forward. That leaves DeCicco in the lead.

As for committee appointments in general, they require the mayor to exhibit the wisdom of Solomon in making as many councillors as happy, or as few unhappy, as possible.

There won’t be a lot of changes to structure, at least not right away. Both Walsh and Bepple want some new committees added, but Milobar has no plans in that regard.

While Walsh would like to see appointments to liaise with the Kamloops Indian Band and TRU, for example, Milobar sees no need for that. The mayor meets frequently with both the KIB chief and the TRU president, he says.

Then, of course, there’s Bepple’s idea for a seniors advisory committee, something she promised during the campaign. She sees it as including reps from the major seniors organizations, as well as from seniors within ethnic groups.

That isn’t on the mayor’s list, either, but that’s not to say Walsh and Bepple can’t get their way — all they need is enough councillors to vote with them.

Here’s where you need to stay awake and take notes. There are three categories of committee appointments: standing, select and statutory. Standing committees are appointed by the mayor, select committees are created and appointed by council. So are liaison reps who attend meetings of other groups, and commissions. The third type, statutory, includes TNRD and a couple of other necessary evils, like the audit committee and the tax review panel.

If you ask me the criteria for assigning committees to one category or another, I will give you Wayne Vollrath’s phone number, because he’s the guy who sorted it all out when he was in the corporate services office at City Hall.

Milobar will present a list for all of them on Tuesday and ask for ratification of the works, even though he technically doesn’t need council’s permission for standing committee appointments.

But, since council as a whole can make up its own committees without the mayor’s say-so, at some point Walsh or Bepple could raise their ideas for new committees, get them passed, and get themselves appointed to them.

Ain’t civic democracy grand?

How left-right, man-woman will play out on new council

For publication in The Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008

So, we have a brand new City council. Well, “brand new” might be an exaggeration, since six of the nine have been around for awhile.

It certainly is a different council, though. For one thing, there are all those new lefties who got elected.

I’m kidding about the lefties. The Kamloops and District Labour Council may be pounding its chest a little over three of its endorsees being elected but the reality is they were probably elected in spite of the KDLC, not because of it.

People vote for candidates for their own reasons, not because someone else — including the labour council — tells them to.

The KDLC would be mistaken if it thinks the election result is a mandate for council to push for a $10 minimum wage, City-funded childcare, or other issues near and dear to its heart.

After all, two-thirds of the new council was not endorsed by the labour council, so presumably those six either didn’t seek that endorsement or are in disagreement on some key points.

The lefties tag is perhaps understandable, even without the KDLC endorsement. Marg Spina used to run the local food bank, while Denis Walsh and Nancy Bepple teamed up to fight the riverfront hotel project. (Bepple somewhat outrageously tried to take credit on election night for stalling the hotel, when in fact the Save the Waterfront group had zip to do with that.)

Then, there’s the fact Walsh managed Tina Lange’s campaign three years ago, adding to the perception there’s now a clique to rival the formidable Kokanee Caucus. (The glory days of the after-hours Caucus, after all, are on the wane with the departure of one charter member to other pastures, and a second having sworn off beer in favor of water and coffee.)

I did say during election-night commentary on NL that the new council looked like a shift to the left, but on further examination it might be negligible. There’s actually a lot of business experience among the newbies.

Walsh is a business owner, so while he might tend to want developers to exhibit a social and environmental conscience, I doubt he’ll be an obstructionist.

Bepple came out of a high tek corporate environment before working at TRU, and should know a thing or two about the need for communities to grow.

While Spina is known for her community volunteerism, supporting business was part of her platform. 

Lange, though not a newcomer, has that connection to Walsh. But she, too, is a business person and hasn’t demonstrated anything in the way of an anti-development bent during her first term.

Whether or not the new council will function well as a team is another question entirely. It should prove entertaining to watch the dynamic between Walsh and Bepple, and between them and the rest of council.

With Walsh coming out of the gate wanting to ban election signs even before he’s been sworn in, it might be a “sign” that we have another councillor who talks before he thinks.

He and Lange, despite their past political alliance, certainly aren’t going to agree on everything. One of the reasons Walsh was endorsed by labour was that he supports a $10 minimum wage, though he admits he currently starts some employees at $8.

Lange, on the other hand, opposes it, which prompted Peter Kerek of the labour council to call her “disingenuous” and claim that “her pocketbook is what guides her.”

If there’s no obvious right-left alignment, or even old-new, what about the man-woman thing?

The gender balance is a big plus. It’s been a long time since council has had four women members. Female councillors may or may not bring a “different perspective” to elected office, but they do make up half the population and deserve to be well-represented.

Don’t expect the women on council to be teaming up to push their own issues, though. They are all independent thinkers and any suggestion they’ll form a coalition based on gender is insulting.

It’s likely the newcomers will feel a responsibility to push for support from the incumbents on some of their campaign promises, and that’s not going to split along either gender or right-left lines.

Bepple, for example, wants to form a seniors’ council to help the City deal with seniors issues, while Pat Wallace — who has advocated for seniors for years — told the audience at one of the election forums the City already has enough committees and doesn’t need another one for seniors.

Walsh’s belief that transit should be free to everyone won’t likely endear him to the savvy veterans who understand the concept of user-pay and that the majority of voters — who don’t use transit for various reasons — would not be amused.

Frankly, I just don’t get Spina’s Education Capital of B.C. stuff. The City and TRU work wonderfully well together, for the most part, but the bottom line is the university has its own board of governors and if they decide to do something there’s squat the City can do about it.

The City also already has a joint working committee with the school district, the purpose of which is to co-operate on all matters of mutual interest.

Spina’s education “promise” will probably amount to a benign resolution committing to “co-operation” or “partnership” between the City and university, and maybe something similar with SD73.

Where does that leave the incumbents? For Wallace, John O’Fee, Peter Milobar and John DeCicco it’s pretty much business as usual other than showing patience and respect for the new members.

This will be Jim Harker’s term to decide whether he wants to be a passenger or a driver. History shows that keeping your head down is an effective way to get re-elected, for awhile. In the long term, not so good.

Harker polled a solid sixth three years ago; this year he hung onto eighth by a scant 80 votes, hardly a ringing endorsement. If he wants to champion something in his second term, he’ll have to compete with the three newcomers as they try to make their mark.

By the way, the low turnout again has people wondering how to get more people to the polls. It’s just a fact of life that a boring election will cut the turnout.

It was suggested to me on the sidewalk the other day that one of the problems is the high number of candidates — people just throw their hands up in frustration at trying to figure out who to vote for, so they don’t vote at all.

What if, she said, there was a five-day withdrawal so the less serious candidates could back out when they saw who their opponents were.

So I checked with Cindy Kennedy at City Hall, and there’s actually a  10-day interlude between nomination day and the printing of the ballots, for that very reason. Yet, no one withdrew during that time, though one candidate bailed after the ballots were already printed.

Candidate bloggers – the good, the bad, the absent

If it’s true that you can tell the character of a person by his political blog (and who says it’s true), I’m not sure what to take from what’s going on in blogland in the wake of last Saturday’s civic election in Kamloops.

At this writing, I see nothing at all on the Milobar For Mayor blog acknowledging his win and thanking his supporters, campaign workers and volunteers.

Murphy Kennedy, the second-place finisher, graciously congratulates all concerned, including Brian Alexander. He writes, in part, “And congratulations to Brian Alexander on his run for Mayor. I got to know Brian over the past few months and enjoyed our time together at the forums. I wish you much success in the future, Brian. Maybe we can get together some time for a coffee and debrief.”

Alexander doesn’t return the favour, instead reverting to regular form and carping about how it was everybody else’s fault that he didn’t do better. The election was poorly organized, the forums were poorly organized, etc. etc.

For a few days, it seemed as though Alexander might actually stop being just another very angry man and learn to talk without using several four-letter words in every sentence. But no, the Brian Alexander we knew is back.

Defeated councillor Arjun Singh is trying to take things in stride, congratulating the winners and looking ahead. But he will, he says, try to figure out what went wrong: “One of (the) things I want to do is to analyze why I did not get re-elected. This will be a project that will take its time, and a lot of stuff will be best guesses.”

Meanwhile, Chad Moats, who quit as Kennedy’s campaign manager part way through, has been silent for quite some time. We’re waiting for the continuation of his series on his experiences.

Bill McQuarrie, a first-time council candidate, uses his blog to thank everyone for a “fantastic experience.”

Looking around for blog postings by other local candidates, I’m not finding much. It seems there’s a mixture of those who accept defeat or victory graciously, those who don’t, and those who are more than a little slack in sending out the appropriate acknowledgements.

Should Peter Sharp seek a judicial recount?

Peter Sharp was surprisingly serene after his near-miss in the Kamloops civic election Saturday night. He lost out for the eighth and final spot on City council to incumbent Jim Harker by 80 votes, so he has a right to be disappointed.

Sharp said after the results came in that, as much as he was hoping to get back on council, it wasn’t as upsetting to him as when he lost out three years ago by a couple of hundred votes.

Yesterday, he said he’s considering asking for a judicial recount. Some people might suggest he’s a sore loser and that he should just live with the outcome, but I don’t agree.

He’s not being a sore loser. Though 80 votes is probably too much to hope to overturn, it’s worthwhile being sure. And, as Sharp says, the electronic voting system adopted by the City for the last election and used again in this one has yet to be challenged.

If the count is found to have been inaccurate, it will have been worth the effort. If it’s found to be 100 percent correct, it will still be worth it to confirm the accuracy of the system.

There are several steps Sharp must go through to actually have a recount carried out, but my guess is he’ll put things in motion before next Monday’s deadline. And I think he’s justified in doing so.

BY THE WAY…. maybe it’s just me but I think it’s important for losing mayoral candidates to show the good manners to show up to congratulate the winner. An unhappy chore, to be sure, but it’s all part of the etiquette. Murphy Kennedy made the trek both to City Hall and to Peter Milobar’s campaign HQ on Saturday night to do the right thing. I never saw Brian Alexander there.

Rothenburger nails civic election predictions

Well, OK, not quite. But here’s the thing. When I submitted my predictions to the office pool, I wrote down actual vote counts for the mayoral election. Here’s what I forecast:

Peter Milobar, 13,100

Murphy Kennedy, 3,246

Brian Alexander, 621

And here’s what they received:

Peter Milobar, 13,147.

Murphy Kennedy, 3,667.

Brian Alexader, 921.

Unfortunately, it does me no good, since vote counts weren’t part of the contest.

As for councillors, I was wrong in predicting Arjun Singh would be re-elected, and that Ken McClelland would make it in. And I had Marg Spina and Nancy Bepple just out of the running, though I was right with Denis Walsh. And, Peter Sharp missed by a whisker, again, though I placed him lower down.

What have I learned? Not a thing. Despite a low-key campaign, and a crummy turnout, Saturday night was exciting. And the election-night parties were buzzing all over town.

Thanks to all the candidates who were hard at it today removing signs. On my way in from Westsyde mid-afternoon, only Spina, McClelland, Bepple and Hanson were sluggish in getting them down — probably busy in other parts of the city.

Mel’s foolish civic election predictions

Yesterday was election day. As I write this, it’s actually last Friday. I’m about to demonstrate why I should never try to predict the outcome of elections.

Below are my predictions. They are not based on who I think deserves to win, who I want to win, or who will do the best darn job ever. Some of them might qualify on one or more of those counts, but my guesses are based on the art of trying to figure out who had the most effective campaigns, who has the most name recognition, and who might have the best community base of support.

I hope those friends of mine who are not in my group of projected winners won’t be angry. It’s not that I didn’t want you win — I’m trying to be scientific. But, as I said, and am about to prove, there’s not much science in this guessing game.

As of late Friday afternoon, here are Mel’s foolish Kamloops civic election predictions, post-dated to Sunday to save myself from those who might take offense.

MAYOR

1. Peter Milobar
2. Murphy Kennedy
3. Brian Alexander

 

COUNCILLOR

1. John O’Fee
2. Tina Lange
3. Pat Wallace
4. Arjun Singh
5. John DeCicco
6. Denis Walsh
7. Jim Harker
8. Ken McClelland
9. Joe Leong
10. Nancy Bepple
11.  Marg Spina
12.  Bill McQuarrie
13.  Peter Sharp
14.  Tim LaRose
15.  Wayne Vollrath
16.  Kevin Skrepnek
17.  Kim Jensen
18.  Abdul Rasheed
19.  Suzanne Flukinger
20.  Joyce Blair
21.  Merv Hanson
22.  Barbara Garrett
23.  Jim Willford
24.  George Dersch
25.  Ben James
26.  Curtis Friesen

Read it and weep, but not until Sunday

I love elections. I love the forums, I love debates, I love trying to figure it all out.

And I love guessing who’s going to win. I don’t have a great track record on that score, but that doesn’t hold me back. As I say in today’s Armchair Mayor column in The Daily News, making predictions is for bookies and fools, and I don’t bet on the horses.

I’ve post-dated a post for tomorrow morning. It offers predictions, compiled Friday afternoon, on where all candidates in today’s Kamloops civic election will place. This should prove once and for all that I should stay out of the predictions game.

But that would be no fun.

History shows Kamloops voters don’t like wholesale change

Armchair Mayor column published in The Daily News, Saturday, Nov. 15.

 

If you haven’t made up your mind who to vote for, you’d better think fast. Today is election day.

Due to the large numbers of candidates, Kamloops civic elections are a lot tougher for voters than federal or provincial elections where the party system limits the field to a handful. 

Twenty-five people want to be City councillors, three want to be the mayor. How to decide? How many new members of council will we pick?

While “change” is a word candidates often promise, it’s not something Kamloops voters often embrace, at least when it comes to picking City councils.

There’s a myth that, in years in which the incumbent mayor isn’t running, the public appetite for change increases significantly. History shows that not to be true.

Seldom have Kamloops voters grown so tired of their council that they have opted for wholesale change. It’s hard for an incumbent to be defeated — they have to really work at it, because almost every election, almost every incumbent who runs is re-elected.

Typically, one incumbent councillor decides not to run again, or decides to run for mayor. We then hand a pink slip to one of the other incumbents for a net change of two. Or maybe three if a councillor moves into the mayor’s job.

Behind Closed Doors — Life At City Hall, Chapter 7

This is the seventh in a series on my experiences as the mayor of Kamloops from 1999 to 2005. I offer it for the interest of anyone who cares about civic politics and our community, and who might be wondering — as we approach a civic election Nov. 15 — what really goes on in City Hall. The series is archived under the City Hall category.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS — LIFE AT CITY HALL

Chapter 7 — ‘A Desire For Change’

 

“Well, so much for barbershop polls.”

— Election speech, Nov. 20, 1999.

 

Neil Morrison and I became friends during the 1970s, when we served together on the Kamloops School Board.

He represented Barriere, where he lived on a small farm with his family, commuting daily to his job as a sociology instructor at University College of the Cariboo.

I’ve known very few people as intelligent and knowledgeable as Neil. He loved to debate social and political issues, and I looked on him not only as my best friend, but as a mentor. Every time we talked, I learned something new.

Many an evening I’d get a call from him telling me to meet him somewhere, or saying he needed a place to stay for the night because he was working late. On one memorable occasion, he called to say he was busting out of One South at RIH and needed a ride.

That was because Neil struggled with demons that manifested themselves from time to time in bizarre behaviour, but it never interfered with our friendship.

After his family life disintegrated, and he couldn’t continue at UCC, he moved to Nelson, and that’s where he was living when I received a call from his former wife Donna to break the news that Neil had died. He’d been dead several days when he was found in his home. The funeral was in Nelson on Saturday, election day, she said.

“I know you won’t be able to make it, but I wanted you to know.”

I was in shock, since I’d hoped Neil could be here in Kamloops for election night. I called an emergency meeting of the Mel for Mayor campaign committee to tell them about Neil’s death. I wanted to be at the funeral, but I didn’t want to let anyone down by being away on election day.

It was Frank Quinn who gave the answer, without hesitation.

“You’ve got to go,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Media forum helped best candidates stand out

Having been involved in election forums for the past few decades, I’ve learned there is no format that is going to please everyone. However (and I’m admittedly biased on this point), I think last night’s forum was the best of the bunch during this civic election campaign.

Rather than written questions, we accepted verbal questions only. In order to maintain a good balance between questions to mayoralty candidates and questions to those running for council, we designated one microphone for each. It worked very well.

Having learned from our federal election forum as well as other civic forums this year, we decided to allow questions to be directed to more than one candidate at a time, and this provided for a more interesting exchange of opinions.

One candidate complained after the forum that he hadn’t been given enough opportunity to speak. Well, part of the purpose of the format we used was to see which candidates would stand out, who would jump in on questions and have something to say.

Several candidates shone in this regard; a number of others sat quietly throughout the evening, even though my co-moderator, Sandy Heimlich-Hall of CFJC, was careful to allow candidates a chance to chime in.

And, sure, some candidates “planted” questions from the audience, and that bugged some of the others in the running. But if your own supporters don’t stand up and toss you a softball question, who’s to blame — your opponent, or you and your committee?

Thanks to The Daily News, CFJC and Kamloops This Week for organizing and hosting the forum, and to TRU for providing use of the Grand Hall. Thanks, as well, to all those who came to hear what the candidates had to say.

And, if you’re wondering about that other election — for school board — come on out to St. Andrew’s on the Square tonight at 6 fora  trustees’ forum. Yours truly moderating.