An unhappy choice for City council

By MEL ROTHENBURGER/ The Armchair Mayor

Some days it’s not much fun being a politician.

At its regular weekly gabfest Tuesday, City councilors had an unhappy choice: give the 46-member Kamloops Voters Society credibility as a force in civic politics, or come off as a status-quo-don’t-ask-us-to-change bunch of dotards who aren’t interested in new ideas.

They chose the latter — though as much by accident as by design — and struggled with how to explain why.

KVS president Chris Ortner, expected to be a candidate in the November civic election, followed up his earlier email to council with an appearance at the meeting.

He went a step further than simply asking for a better process as part of his plan for “participatory budgeting,” proposing that ratepayers actually have a direct say in how to allocate certain parts of the City’s budget.

“Important to note,” Ortner’s outline said, “that the citizens’ representatives identify, in consultation with City staff, what parts of the budget are of interest to them, and appropriate for them to play a part in.”

The direct involvement of citizens in budget decisions isn’t as radical as it sounds. Ortner pointed out that Guelph allows neighbourhood groups a say in spending for recreation programs, youth services and physical improvements to community facilities.

It’s actually a concept borrowed from American cities whose councils have exported limited budgetary authority to neighbourhood associations.

It answers the problem of such associations thriving when they’re fighting a cause but stagnating when the battle is over. Giving them some power — but not too much power — to allocate how tax monies are spent on their home turf keeps them vibrant.

Half of City council either didn’t get it, or didn’t like it. Jim Harker commented that council is elected every three years “and you feel that’s not good enough?”

John DeCicco thought things were fine the way they were, and Pat Wallace figured any changes to the process should be left for the new council to decide — a refrain that will be heard from the incumbents more and more often as the election approaches.

Mayor Peter Milobar was equally unreceptive.

He began by asking Ortner if he’d ever proposed changes to City spending at the annual budget meeting. When Ortner said no, the mayor dropped it, but the unspoken question seemed to be why he thought the process needed improvements if he didn’t even use what’s currently in place.

Then he telegraphed a perhaps-unintended message by asking administrator Randy Diehl if he thought the budget process needed fixing. In other words, council leaves it to staff to run the show.

Tina Lange, Denis Walsh, Nancy Bepple and Marg Spina were in favour of doing some research on the matter. As Lange said, “It’s our duty to do what we can to change things.”

But, the 4-4 tie put an end to it. Council might regard the KVS as a butinsky bunch of would-be civic revolutionaries, but an option would have been to apprehend the issue and undertake the City’s own dialogue with taxpayers on whether they even care about how the budget is done.

It’s the kind of middle ground John O’Fee might have used to rescue his colleagues if he’d still been at the table.

As it is now, consultation and accountability are pretty much guaranteed to be an issue come November.