CITY HALL – Mayor draws up dramatic changes to committee structure
Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson is shaking up his committees.
The mayor plans to add citizen members to standing committees and change who chairs them. After a list of the changes was leaked to media from within City Hall, Hamer-Jackson spoke with several of them today (Thursday, March 16, 2023), saying some councillors needed more time for other duties, and that more change is needed.
His new list shows Coun. Bill Sarai removed as chair of the Community Relations and Reconciliation Committee, Coun. Kelly Hall shuffled from the Community and Protective Services Committee, and Coun. Mike O’Reilly bumped from the chair of the Development and Sustainability Committee.
Added to various committees are Randy Sunderman, Darpan Sharma, Bud Smith, Bill Swaine, Jim Bucharyk, Tom Caine, Sonny Leonard, Brandon Coyle and Deborah Newby. Sunderman and Sharma were candidates in last October’s council election, while Smith is a former B.C. attorney-general.
The new lineup:
ArmchairMayor.ca 
No doubt the mayor’s actions will endear him to Council members!!!! His unilateral actions don’t bode well for improving council and mayor relationships. And to name one’s friends to committees – well a bad idea all around. And all the new people are males – again not good. Guess we just wait for the next blow-up! IMHO, RHJ needs some lessons in team work and public policy development if the next 4 years are to go relatively smoothly.
One of the new appointees is Deborah Newby.
Actually RHJ is a very amicable fellow. He is probably quite frustrated (alongside many of us in the community) with council members posturing and beaking off ad nauseam without offering any concrete ideas. It is especially troublesome in the case of O’Reily, Sarai and Bass who have been proving themselves quite ineffective in the last four-plus years in moving the city forward. And don’t forget we have four women on council. None of them showing anything special up to this point.
Kinda treating the committees like cabinet portfolio’s.
Did these council members want to not be in these committees that they were tossed out of, and do the new named council members want to be on committees?
On the other hand, two of these ‘community members’ ran in the last Council election and lost … in other words voters DID NOT want these people working for them … but this Mayor has given them committee positions.
Let that sink in, people voters do not want in positions of power in the city are gifted exactly that. This obviously happened when the Mayor used the media to get the message out for losing Council candidates to contact him.
Now … it is possible these people may have realized that if they stay in the public eye for 4 years on city committees, they may fortune better in the next election … in other words, being asked to sit on committee is a politically fortunate opportunity.
Thanks for politicizing our functional operational committees Mr. Mayor.
The question is, am I supposed to research these other ‘community members’, who are now deciding on city activity and policy, to find out where they stand on stuff? At least Mr. Smith will be fairly easy to look into.
In other words, is it now incumbent on the voter to ignore the normal electoral candidacy process to find out who’s ACTUALLY running the show?
Dear Kamloops Mayor,
Adding Kamloops Citizens to city standing committees is – in my opinion- an excellent idea.
I would like to note, however, that of the 9 citizens added to committees 8 are male and there is 1 female.