EDITORIAL – Calling BS on the AAP; it taints the PAC, sportsplex projects

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

WHEN GOVERNMENT tells you how well it’s been communicating with you, it’s a sure sign it hasn’t been doing well at communicating with you.

Coun. Mike O’Reilly, who chairs the Build Kamloops select committee, provided a brief lecture on Wednesday (Sept. 4, 2024) to those who dare to criticize the job City Hall has been doing with the alternative approval process being used for the two big borrowing bylaws it’s trying to get passed.

“Rumours,” he called some of the opposition, reeling off a string of council and committee meetings at which the projects and AAP have been discussed. Plus community events, media interviews and so on. “We have been very vocal about Build Kamloops,” he said as he opened a meeting of his committee.

As he reassured everyone how much communicating was being done on the projects and the process, he noted the meeting would not be open to public inquiries about them — “that’s not how committee meetings work” — and the AAP would not be discussed during the meeting.

Except that he’d just discussed it. So, I call bullshit.

Most of the AAP process has taken place during the summer, when nobody pays much attention to what City Hall is doing. To the claim that council must not interfere with the process by discussing it with the public, I again call bullshit — it should be providing every opportunity possible for public discussion. They can do that without trying to influence the outcome.

There’s a lot being touted about the AAP that is, well, you know what. There’s certainly some BS being spread around by some of the AAP opponents, too, and that doesn’t help, but the issue of process has become a distraction from the merits of the projects.

It’s a bad process for a great initiative. All it would take to fix it would be a motion passed by council to cancel the AAP and go straight to a referendum.

That’s what Burnaby did this spring after initially launching an AAP to remove some park land from dedicated status in order to use it for a green recycling facility. There was so much opposition to the use of an AAP that the City council held a special meeting to cancel it part way through.

Mayor Mike Hurley called using an AAP “a misjudgment.” Coun. Sav Dhaliwal admitted he simply didn’t know enough about AAPs, and that taxpayers were skeptical of it. “They thought we were going to just sneak in the middle of the night and just do it.”

He continued: “We chose to use AAP, all of us did. We didn’t do our homework. None of us did.”

Hurley, the mayor, said: “As long as I’m around here, we will never attempt to use that AAP process again.”

Taxpayers in other cities have also objected to using AAPs, though Burnaby is the best example. Kamloops councillors should learn something from their B.C. neighbours.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.