ROTHENBURGER – Loosening reins on committee meetings a good step
(Image: Council discusses committee issue Tuesday.)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
KAMLOOPS CITY COUNCIL took a tentative step toward greater transparency and engagement Tuesday (Jan. 21, 2020).
At a committee of the whole meeting, council received a report from staff on Mayor Ken Christian’s committee structure adopted a year ago. That structure consists of five committees with a whole bunch of engagement and working groups attached to them.
The committees, thus far, have had no provision for public inquiries or public delegations. It’s a deficiency in needs of correction. Something of a precedent was set last October when the Kamloops Voters Society and Domtar were allowed to make presentations to the finance committee on industrial taxes.
Inserting regular public inquiries sections — similar to that in regular council meeting agendas — into committee meetings would be a good thing to do. Council couldn’t bring itself to go that far yesterday, but did support formalizing delegations.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He writes five commentaries a week for CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
But the thing is the power players, CUPE and the land developers for example, have for various reasons the upper hand in shaping administrate decisions which council seem to generally fully support unless there is a public up-roaring which only happens sporadically. Public input sound like the right thing to do but often leads to nowhere…methinks a big waste of time and energy.