LETTER – Decision on the PAC proposal may come down to just 1,000 ‘votes’

1,000 votes.

That’s all that’s needed, 1,000 additional votes and the PAC is defeated. During the last election our mayor received 7,300 votes, all that is required to defeat the AAP this time around is 8,300 votes, that’s just 1,000 votes more than the mayor received, not exactly a daunting amount.

Knowing this, one might think that the hateful 8 or is it the gang of 8, maybe it should be the PAC of 8, whatever, as I was saying, one might think those 8 other people would ease up a bit, lay low for the summer. Nope, not this octarchy, just over a week ago on a Friday afternoon they took their latest punitive shot. By removing or is it neutering the mayor from the TNRD and Kamloops Airport Authority Society, yes neutering is the right verb, after all what’s left for them to take? Well, they just couldn’t help themselves, they don’t have the discipline to let the sleeping dog lie, they had to make that last incision.

Ron Fawcett must be shaking his head for backing these horses.

Sure the mayor supported the PAC when it was a $90-million build last year and again this past January when it was a $120-million build, although he had a few questions or was it a little weak-kneed, Kelly, could you clarify? When the price recently hit $154 million questions became concerns, but now when there’s talk of a number closer to $175 million and an opportunity to give the shaft to his friends around the horseshoe, well what’s a word stronger than concern, a much stronger word?

If, or is it when, the mayor pulls his support for the PAC how many of those 7,300 will follow? Moreover, what of the 70 per cent who didn’t bother to vote during the last election, how many of those “would be” voters have become ”will be” voters this time around?

CFJC-TV ran a seven-day poll a few weeks ago about the PAC, 1,406 votes for the PAC, 1,601 against, that’s 53.25 per cent against. Remember the 2015 referendum, that had a 53.7 per cent no vot;, not a whole lot of progress in nine years. Politically speaking, taking a stand opposing council on a topic which the city is split down the middle might be a wise re-election strategy, one might even say Machiavellian. Do we know anybody who’s running for re-election?

Is there anyone who really thinks this AAP has a snowball’s chance of succeeding? Personally, I don’t think the checker players who came up with this AAP idea thought things through thoroughly.

You take a very divisive mayor with an extremely loyal base of supporters, you add in an extremely expensive project which half the city vetoed within recent memory when the borrowing cost was a third (cough cough) of what it is now and then top it off with an exceedingly unpopular council, not exactly the ingredients for the soup of the day. The question on the ballot might as well be if you think puppies aren’t huggable, this council’s not coming away with a victory.

If the prevailing wish was that fewer motivated no voters would stay home, they are right, less motivated voters will stay home, and they will vote, at home. A referendum requires the voter to leave their house, drive/bike/walk to the nearest polling station, wait in line, vote and finally return home, a waste of about an hour out of their Saturday afternoon in September, when the weather is nice, sunny but not too hot.

The AAP requires the voter to check a box, stick it in an envelope or drop it off at a receiving box, hell, volunteers will likely canvass your neighbourhood picking ballots up. Whatever the case, we’re talking about a couple of minutes at the voter’s convenience, this is not a high bar, not after we’ve gone thru COVID and all the online business that entailed.

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the those who support the idea of a PAC but oppose this project due to cost or lack of transparency or concerns over operating costs, or the added tax burden (trivia, what’s presently the second highest taxed city in the province?) or the lack of trust with administration/council or a number of other valid concerns.

The city is now claiming to have 87,131 eligible voters; 22 months ago BC Elections estimated we had 76,327 for the municipal election. Really, are we to believe Kamloops had an increase of 10,804 eligible voters, not citizens, but actual voters in 22 months, that’s a tough sell. Ya, let’s add that to the trust issue.

Okay, so let’s split the difference and call it 83,000 eligible voters, making a 8,300 vote threshold, that’s 1,000 more votes than the mayor received last election. I don’t see 1,000 additional votes as a very high bar to pass, scratch that, make it 999.

MAC GORDON