Local Councils Are Not Fiefdoms
by Dermod Travis,
Small town B.C. may be facing a plague of what disgraced former U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew called the nattering nabobs of negativity or at least that’s what a number of B.C. mayors and their allies would have you believe.
The crime these nattering nabobs have committed? Having the temerity to challenge council gospel.
In one town the local mayor accused those who opposed plans for a new sewage treatment plant as behaving like bullies, in another the chief administrative officer referred to his critics as “a cancer.”
Someone else took issue with a newspaper column critical of the local mayor and inquired through a letter to the editor as to “What are her sources? Are they my neighbours, your neighbours?”
Some of it reeks of McCarthyism, some amateur hour.
One B.C. mayor went so far as to criticize local citizens for contacting the media and province-wide watchdog groups (including IntegrityBC), while falsely claiming that no one in his administration would ever stoop to such a dastardly deed.
Blissfully ignoring the fact that his chief administrative officer was given free rein to attack local ratepayers on CBC Radio.
Pick-up many of B.C.’s community newspapers and chances are you’ll see these fights playing out in the letters to the editor section, if not on the front page. Sometimes those same papers find themselves drawn into the brawls through no fault of their own.
Trace the origins of many of these civic street fights and the common denominator seems to be what the Captain said in Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
It’s as though “you can’t fight city hall” is giving way to “you can’t criticize city hall” and that’s not a good omen for local democracy.
While some town councils are finding innovative ways to engage their citizens online, in town halls, and through creative advertising; others are hiding behind closed doors, barring citizens from critical decisions that effect their community’s future.
Something is seriously amiss when Central Saanich meets in camera more often than the City of Toronto. Chances are most local councils across B.C. are in the same boat. And what’s getting decided behind those doors isn’t small potatoes.
White Rock ratepayers woke up one morning to learn that their council had decided to purchase the municipality’s water system from the City of Edmonton-owned Epcor, even though the system isn’t for sale and no one is saying what it might cost if Epcor was willing to sell it.
The report council based its decision on must be stamped “Top Secret,” because outside of a select few no one else has seen it. Councillors allegedly don’t even have a copy.
In a tongue-in-cheek series of newspaper columns – 13 Ways To Kill Your Community – Alberta’s Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths wrote: “the seventh of thirteen things that you can do to ensure that your community fails and dies is to refuse to meaningfully cooperate with other organizations, businesses, agencies, boards or communities.”
Griffiths could have easily added ratepayers to that list, because election to local office doesn’t come with a blank cheque. Democracy doesn’t end when the polls close. To succeed you need buy-in.
And when two out of three voters stayed at home in the last civic elections, councils should be encouraging citizen involvement instead of trying to snuff it out.
Consider that in 2011, Prince George mayor Shari Green was elected by 13 per cent of all registered voters, Kelowna’s mayor Walter Gray by 15 per cent of voters, and Nanaimo’s mayor John Ruttan by 14 per cent.
With local elections a little over a year away maybe it’s time to hit pause on the vitriol, because there’s something to be said for civility.
In his new book, The Importance of Being Civil: The Struggle for Political Decency, McGill University professor John A. Hall explains that civility is the glue that holds society together.
In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Hall went on to explain that: “Talking is crucial because, if you talk, you make people more reasonable. Civility on the part of government is absolutely vital.”
Hall’s book should be required reading for local councils and every candidate before next year’s local elections.
Dermod Travis is the executive director of IntegrityBC. www.integritybc.ca
Comments
Local Councils are not fiefdoms? Could have fooled me.
It will be thus so long as we’re trying to divvy up an increasing overall insufficiency of purchasing power in the hands of the general public believing that by so doing we can make it somehow sufficient to fund everything everybody needs.
We can’t. No one can. Not the way the current financial set-up is presently arranged.
There is a fundamental disconnect between our actual overall ability to produce and provide goods and services, (which is constantly increasing physically with every advancement of efficiency), and our overall financial ability to pay for them. Which is going the other way.
The ‘figures’ we’re using with the dollars signs in front of them simply are no longer actually reflecting the ‘facts’.
Until we start to look at this, and take measures to correct it, the fundamental idea of political democracy is literally withering and dying on the vine. And we increasingly tune out as we watch those we put in government attempt solutions that won’t ever work, and then try to cover up their failures.
The three legged stool – social, economic, environmental .. needs to be balanced.
This article deals with a problem that is a social one.
Perhaps the problem that we see is that, like socredible, Councils are frustrated at the inability to handle the economic/financial side of their duties and thus are pressured to the extent that they think they can shirk their social duties because they think that only they have the info that pushes them to do what they do and any other chatter is simply unwanted “noise”.
Interesting that we have two articles on the failure of civic government to communicate and we have “noise” coming from the peanut gallery in Prince George about a decision to hire a communications person who hopefully can do the job they are supposed to do.
And do not kid yourself. When we have a person who ran for Mayor on the need to have a conversation, got in, and then we find that the person cannot communicate, we most definitely have a communications problem at the top of the governance structure.
BTW, the article is bang on. I look forward to more from Integritybc.
BTW, it is always good to look up current usage of words when one wishes to communicate. Words change.
Thus, the author ought to have added the word Feudal in front of fiefdom since the modern use of the word includes the notion that it means “an area over which a person or organization exerts authority or influence”
Thus, cities are modern versions of feudal fiefdoms and those people we vote in to give direction and manage that patch of land are like the lords of old that exert authority and influence over those patches of land while they have been given that authority by the people who actually “own” the land.
But, as the author states, there are some unwritten rules of the limits of that authority.
It seems to be time to go back to the written rules, the Acts of the provincial legislatures, to make sure that the “unwritten” rules are written.
As long as we have a political system where those who were elected are virtually untouchable until the next election the system won’t change. It is perfect the way it is, for the career politician. And lets face it, politicians are no longer in politics to do their civic duty. We need a system where politicians are forced to be accountable to the people who elected them instead of to their own agendas.
“We need a system where politicians are forced to be accountable to the people who elected them instead of to their own agendas.”
You mean where Councillors to be do not figure that they are going in to change things ….. That would seem to be an agenda.
Many do exactly that. They present their own agenda during the campaign. Then the gullible ones vote them in and discover that the agendas will change when the people elected find out that there are powers that be are much more adept at handling Councillors than Councillors re at handling Administrators.
Result……?
Things continue the way they have been done …..
Until a new top dog administrator takes over and everyone’s fingers are crossed that the right person has been put in place.
Of course, the problem then is, does everyone agree what the indicators are that verify that it is the right administrator?
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