‘I’m chatty and I’m willing to wear it,’ says talkative Bepple
Coun. Bepple and the Armchair Mayor have coffee.
COFFEE WITH THE ARMCHAIR MAYOR — The thing about watching and listening to Nancy Bepple in City council meetings, it’s not obvious that she has a sense of humour.
In fact, she often seems a bit intense as she debates the issues of the day. Sitting down at coffee, though, it’s a different matter. She loves “getting into it” and doesn’t mind telling you when she thinks you’re way off base, but all in the spirit of a fun discussion.
“Kibitzing,” she calls it. I discovered this a few weeks ago when we had coffee at Blenz and she put me in my place over those confounded parking kiosks.
Actually, I still wasn’t convinced they’re a good thing, but she certainly made her own opinions clear. So I thought it would be interesting to invite her to CBC Radio’s Coffee With The Armchair Mayor this week to talk about the “silly season” — that’s when civic politicians start vying for space in the news columns months ahead of the November election.
I began by listing council’s pay raise, parking-rate increase, those infernal kiosks, and the impressive travel expenses racked up by council (Bepple was second in 2013 only to the mayor) as examples of “a banner year” at City Hall.
Is there a spending problem, I asked. “Do you need therapy?” Hoping, of course, to get a rise out of her.
Bepple laughed — “Hold on a second, hold on,” she said, providing her own list of the things the City has achieved in terms of public facilities and infrastructure. “What we have right now is the opportunity of a choice because we’ve paid for the big ticket items,” she said, going on to describe some of the less spectular but nonetheless important stuff such as helping low-income families access recreation facilities.
And, she reiterated her concern for seniors.
Of course, no conversation with Bepple is possible without talking about banjo music, which is her passion, and this was no exception. And she admitted she tends to talk a lot in council meetings.
“Sometimes I’m more chatty, sometimes I’m not as chatty.”
Who’s the chattiest council member?
“”I’ve been pointed at a number of times as being one of the chattiest on council, and I’m willing to wear it.”
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Interesting to read about your coffee meeting went with Nancy Bepple. On the occasions that I have watched council meetings on TV, I noticed that Nancy is asking the same questions of staff that appears to have been already asked by another councillor and receiving the same answer. I think the motion by council to increase the councillors’ stipend by $11,000 will haunt those who voted for it in the next election. As well, this council is responsible for the largest increase in city taxes 14 years that I am aware of. They have doubled the cost of parking in the downtown core and I haven’t heard a kind word from anyone about the new parking kiosks. And one last thing, I was always of the understanding that being an elected councillor was a part-time job. To suggest that one did not realize that the job was more than part time, would suggest that they did not investigate before taking it on. If you reduce your full-time job so as to take on the responsibility of City councillor, then that’s the individual’s decision. It does not warrant a huge increase in their stipends to cover any loss in their full-time employment. One last thing, I cannot understand the logic of volunteering to take on more than one FCM committee, the time lost to City business must be considerable.
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