ROTHENBURGER – Clarification, please, on mayor’s banishment to the batcave

IT’S NOT A ROOM with a view, exactly, but Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson’s new basement digs aren’t all that bad.

There’s lots of space there, since it was built for small meetings. It has interesting angles, has a washroom and there’s a place for a coffee pot too. Group photos of past councils used to hang there, and maybe still do; wall space is surprisingly limited at City Hall.

All things considered, it’s a nicer space than the traditional one upstairs that’s been used by Kamloops mayors for at least 35 years. The one in which then-mayor Phil Gaglardi sometimes stripped down to his underwear and jogged around his desk for exercise. That’s what he told me once, anyway. Or maybe it was just legend.

The new location isn’t perfect, of course. It does have some windows, though there’s not much to look at through them. There’s no wheelchair access, so appointments with the current mayor will be limited to the able bodied.

Regardless of its pros and cons, the meeting room-cum-mayor’s office is a step down, literally, for the mayor. The symbolism of pushing him into the basement could not have escaped the councillors.

What’s next, making him go stand in a corner? Banishment from City Hall entirely? Hamer-Jackson already says he’s perfectly capable of working from home but that not only isn’t ideal, it’s just wrong — the mayor has to be in the people place, where City business is done.

According to current Deputy Mayor Mike O’Reilly, the decision to move the mayor isn’t a sanction, that is, not a punishment. It’s for the safety of staff and protection of the City from possible legal liability, he says. Earlier efforts to prevent the mayor from interacting with staff by blocking off his office from the rest of City Hall haven’t worked, says DM O’Reilly.

If we’re to accept that it wasn’t vindictive, we need a little more information on the rationale. Currently, all we have is that Hamer-Jackson allegedly continued to act inappropriately with staff even after locked doors were put in at his main-floor office in April — even preventing him from working on weekends for a short time — to keep him out of staff areas.

But, RHJ insists, he hasn’t had any direct contact with staff since then, not even being allowed to take the few short steps into Legislative Services to deliver documents. Instead, he has to make his way around and into the public lobby, where counters are protected with plexiglass partitioning, to pass along the papers for someone to take them in to the corporate offices.

Even though members of council are not legally considered municipal employees, handling the matter as a confidential personnel situation makes some sense for privacy reasons, especially since staff members are the alleged complainants. Except that even though the council attempted to keep it out of the public eye, it expected it to become common knowledge within short order.

Which it certainly would have. Something as dramatic as booting the mayor out of his office should not be a secret anyway. Even if everybody in the building had kept a tight lip — which they didn’t — the first time someone wanted to meet with the mayor and was directed to his new batcave, the word would be out.

City Hall is a place of contradictions. It can leak like a sieve when it serves someone’s purpose, or it can be bottled up tight as a drum when it suits.

In this case, sealing up the details of the mayor’s alleged transgressions since last spring leaves us having to take councillors at their word. After a point though, it’s not good enough. Confidentiality could be maintained while at the same time backing up the decision with some facts. Specifically, how many incidents were there? Were they with members of staff or with senior management? No names necessary, just circumstances. And how are councillors currently defining what is appropriate and what isn’t?

What’s the explanation for the discrepancy between the two stories: one that Hamer-Jackson was effectively cut off from staff over the past several months, and the other that he somehow continued to harass some of them in some way?

If Hamer-Jackson is the subject of four Worksafe BC complaints and additional code of conduct violations, when were these alleged to have occurred?

Without at least that scant amount of detail, this latest chapter in the City Hall drama looks like just more of the same old feud that has festered for the past two years.

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.