UBCM
Without well-functioning municipalities there would be no BC as is - without their Councils they would be dysfunctional.
And - of course - municipalities supply most of BC's votes, Victoria!
Therefore - the UBCM could be a powerful decision-driving organ for furthering the municipalities' developmental interests - incidentally benefiting BC as a whole.
Consistently nipping at Victoria's ankles, keeping her hopping!
Ouch!
After all - with over 170 members, including 8 First Nations - it is "an organization that has served and represented the interests of local governments in BC since 1905". Though without any appropriate growl, bark, bite. While its Mission Statement ostensibly prepared for that.
BUT!
Pretty much the only times electorates get any news from/about the UBCM are when its annual gab-fest is announced, is in progress, is over.
After - all we get is lists of interesting people local reps met, and the interesting workshops they attended there.
No major decisions.
And that seems to be that for another year.
One workshop last year - while of explosive significance - received little more seriously exploratory attention than others. Providing energetic entertainment value though.
This was about increasingly open expressions of hostility among/between Councillors and Mayors - in front of the great unwashed, too.
COUNCIL RAGE!!!
Hostilities have always been a given, but until recently reined-in with broody silences and shuttered looks: "keeping it civil".
And willfully unproductive.
More on that later.
Either the UBCM is unwilling to accept its role as enabler and the possible impact of a well-oiled P.R. machine on Victoria's often uninformed decision-making processes above and the members' reaction below, or it just finds little to connect with in Victoria.
We don't know - there seem to be no press-releases.
Two of Victoria's constructs of particular obtuseness we do know about well - standing in the way of people possibly signing-on for Council and feeling on-the-ground support once they've got the job - thus far have been left unchallenged openly by the UBCM. Although clearly detrimental to the growth of individual office-holders and their communities.
They are:
1.
Extending municipal terms of office from 3 to 4 years - without prior consultation of the directly concerned yet.
2.
Having mayors uncomfortably double as Chair of 11 Police Boards - with Vancouver the largest municipality among them.
Where were these topics in the UBCM's last annual? Has the Chair topic ever been critically addressed, seeing it's been an issue since Day One.
3 to 4 Years - No Probation
Towards the end of the second-to-last 3-year term a Nelson Councillor - expecting to be re-elected - said: it will be good to get some fresh blood and new energy on Council.
After less than 3 years.
Understandable - seeing the job is a draining experience, more involved than just showing-up at 2 Council Meetings per month.
Aside from staggering amounts of paper to be digested (fully, one wishes), staggering numbers of unproductive meetings to be attended: fellow-Councillors, the Mayor and admin Staff have to be handled within the context of constant impossible to sidestep deep-tissue city-hall-politicking.
Yet I also felt: if you need a fix now - after less than 3 years - how will you make it through the next 3? And will it be fair to expect the new ones to supply Council with what it's running short of now, this having to weaken the next Council from the start.
Most suitable as Councillors - for vision and general oomph - are younger, well-educated professionals. But those may also have a busy career and/or growing family.
Least desirable are the financially secure with too much free time, having themselves (re-)elected: not necessarily on the basis of what they can bring to the job but support among the neighbors.
When it comes to municipal elections here, voters show remarkable immaturity: consistently voting against their own interests.
Back to fresh blood. So there came 2 newbies of the right sort - one of them with the most votes of all candidates yet! - raring to contribute, change the world!
But they never got up to speed and promptly left after a single term. Taking the job to heart, making it too personal - a huge mistake in Smallishtown politics.
One must wonder at the UBCM's level of awareness of Councils on-the-ground.
If they had been/were aware: how could they just roll over when Victoria capriciously increased a term to 4 years!
This has no discernible positive value, but it does keep Councillors (voluntarily?!) captive for an additional year - with possibly more bad blood, actually! - thereby is bound to change the gene-pool of future possibles.
Victoria's brief announcement on this: aligning municipal elections with 4-year provincials makes no sense either.
They don't happen at the same time, and provincials are for well-paid career politicos, while municipals are for part-time dilettantes, paid nowhere near enough.
With mayors somewhere in between there.
We were never polled on a possible extension; we were never informed timely and comprehensibly that an extension had actually made it on the table.
Whose table, Victoria?
Councils are the spine of municipalities, are made-up of basic citizens, whose goodwill here is taken for granted by out-of-touch Victoria water-cooler types.
While the UBCM is playing dead.
The affront of adding a year to already overloaded 3-year termers: 3 years of time and energy - largely unappreciated - for the betterment of their communities.
You vill do as you're told!!!
Shame on you, Victoria, for having done this!
Shame on you, UBCM, for allowing this to happen!
About the workshop on serious confrontations in Council Chambers. Could it be that many have about had it, and looking at yet another year or more of exactly the same - people and stuff - was/is just becoming unbearable? Obviously - nobody would be honest about this here or anywhere: after all - they're stuck within the duration.
While one can empathize: should those now or even earlier at a breaking-point be re-elected, if they - I mean gimme a break! - choose to run again?
Local Councillor Dailly - in a meltdown during his 3rd year having attacked a citizen unprovoked and uninformed - accusing him of lying - ought to ask himself this question, for his own well-being and that of the community.
While expressing hostility openly, directly may not seem the most productive way of dealing with work-relationships: open expression does beat furtive repression - it's a step!
Next step - insisting that not only the 3-year term be reinstated, but also an elected municipal official be limited to 2 consecutive terms.
If they can extend them just like that - they can shorten them just like that!
In order for a Council to be effective its members need to be independently creative in contextual deliberation.
Under difficult circumstances.
Our current Council has shown little of that!
This is not to scare people off running in the very upcoming election, but just pissing and moaning about Xmas lights in a Star letter simply does not a useful Councillor make.
Contact the UBCM and your local MLA Michelle Mungall about the term-extension. This effects everybody: those who run for office and those who will be run by them once they get in and then what!
Mungall started her political career as a single-term (3-year) Nelson Councillor.
Michelle Mungall
michelle.mungall.mla@leg.bc.ca
Toll Free: 1.877.388.4498
Union of British Columbia Municipalities
ubcm@ubcm.ca
Part 2 will look at Deb Kozak occupying 2 chairs (sort-of and not by choice): the mayor's and that of the Nelson Police Board.
I mean - couldn't you just ....!
Image credits:
Dezeen
Deb Kozak, Mayor
dkozak@nelson.ca
City Council
nelsoncouncil@nelson.ca
Frances Long, Admin Director
flong@nelson.ca
Kevin Cormack, CAO
kcormack@nelson.ca
