ROTHENBURGER – Will the sun rise in the west over City Hall this year?

CIVIC POLITICIANS get back to work this week and the question is, will anything be different?

Come Tuesday (Jan. 14, 2025) , for example, will councillors manage to stay seated for the entire meeting without walking out on the mayor?

I think we know the answer. We might just as well ask if the sun will rise in the west and set in the east. Or if people will start being polite to one another on social media. Or if we’ll start going to the gym more often.

As we begin 2025, all eyes will be on the two main combatants in the City Hall cage match — Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson and Coun. Bill Sarai. Hamer-Jackson for his unremitting efforts to exonerate himself, and Sarai for his vow to become less reactionary, to concentrate on his mental health, and to earn back trust.

Many, of course, were of the opinion Sarai should resign over his self-confessed “unprofessional and unacceptable” secret audio recording of an argument he had with the mayor, but he decided to stay on.

After his public apology, he told a media scrum, “I made a mistake and I’m man enough to own up to it.”

Yes, he did own up to it when he was interviewed by police. How he’ll own up to it going forward will be a subject of interest, I’m sure, perhaps influenced by the results of an internal investigation.

Then there’s the mayor. His methodology for fighting accusations surrounding his handling of his job hasn’t worked very well so far — as soon as he tries to bring up his grievances under the Mayor’s Report section of council meetings, councillors rise and vacate the room.

The last time was at the regular meeting of Dec. 10, when he tried to describe a conversation that was said to have happened in December 2022 between former MLA Kevin Krueger and resident Cory Evans.

That’s about as far as he got before councillors called a recess and left the mayor with nobody to talk to. If they’d stuck around, Hamer-Jackson would have explained that, according to Evans, who has put it into an affidavit, Krueger wanted to meet with the mayor in order to offer support.

At some point, Krueger and Hamer-Jackson did, apparently, have a phone conversation.

This might not seem Earth shattering to you or me but the issue of when and why the mayor and Kevin Krueger were in contact is important to Hamer-Jackson because it goes back to the conflict between the mayor and Coun. Katie Neustaeter, who is Krueger’s daughter.

All the way back, in fact, to the well-known “St. Patrick’s Day Manifesto” of 2023 in which the eight councillors blasted the mayor over his planned committee changes and added accusations that Hamer-Jackson had subjected councillors to, among other things, “violations of personal and professional boundaries.”

That statement, read by Neustaeter on behalf of the councillors, became the centre for a whole bunch of legal and political machinations including a defamation lawsuit by the mayor against Neustaeter, and a claim by Neustaeter that Hamer-Jackson was interfering in family matters.

The various accusations and counter-accusations haven’t been proven in court but a court hearing is scheduled to begin next week.

Then, of course, there’s the “Chamberlain report” that was made public hard on the heels of the Dec. 10 meeting. A Code of Conduct investigation by Vancouver lawyer Sarah Chamberlain, acting on complaints from Coun. Neustaeter, found that Hamer-Jackson’s claim he’d been subjected to suggestions from the public that he was guilty of sexual misconduct based on the content of the March 17 statement wasn’t substantiated with examples. Therefore, he was in a Code of Conduct violation.

Again, it has to do with that “personal and professional boundaries” thing, for which councillors have never offered an apology or retraction (a suggested remedy), much less a comprehensive explanation.

At the time of the Chamberlain investigation, in the fall of 2023, Hamer-Jackson received an opinion from his then-lawyer that the report was deeply flawed and that any sanctions resulting from it would be irresponsible. The option of seeking a judicial review was noted.

Yet, the Chamberlain report was the basis for cutting Hamer-Jackson’s pay by 10 per cent. City council announced it in June last year, but without any details other than to say the report found the mayor breached the code by “misleading the public.”

The report itself was dated Oct. 27, 2023, which might lead you to wonder why it took more than a year for its actual contents to be made public. Such is the state of things in Frootloops, where council can announce sanctions against the mayor without explaining why, and it takes a media FOI application to find out.

One bone of contention with the Chamberlain report is that the investigation it’s based on took place regardless of the various legal actions. Hamer-Jackson’s view is that Neustaeter’s Code complaints should have been put on hold until the issues have gone through the courts.

Also recently, a media FOI application came up with yet another Code of Conduct report, this one finding Hamer-Jackson violated FIPPA privacy laws with respect to a slide show on street issues he’d intended to use for a chamber of commerce presentation. As was widely reported at the time, the slides were pulled when staff discovered one of them showed a sex act being performed.

Hamer-Jackson said back then he wasn’t aware of the problem slide. No harm resulted, and sending it to a Code of Conduct investigation seems a waste of time and money. Nevertheless, it could result in more sanctions against the mayor.

There’s a somewhat similar, and instructive, case that happened next door in Alberta. where Medicine Hat Mayor Linnsie Clark took heavy sanctions imposed on her by her council to a judicial review.

In March of last year, she was publicly reprimanded by councillors, had her pay cut in half, was removed as the council’s official spokesperson as well as the chair of council meetings, and was banned from communicating with the manager except by emails that must be copied to councillors.

The complaint against the mayor was that she was rude to the City’s manager, Ann Mitchell, in a council meeting. Clark’s concern was her impression that Mitchell undertook an administrative reorganization without normal council approval as outlined in City bylaws. I’ve listened to the exchange and the mayor’s questions were pointed but sounded respectful and relevant to me; obviously, councillors had a different view.

In August, a judge ruled the mayor’s full pay must be restored, that she has a right to preside over council meetings, act as council spokesperson and attend administration committee meetings. The judge found the sanctions imposed by council to be “disproportionate” based on the City’s code of conduct and that “no reasonable” council would have imposed them. The judge also found that banning Clark from administration areas of City Hall restricted her from doing her job.

However, she decided an apology from the mayor to the manager would be reasonable. This, Clark did, but councillors approved a motion to ask the province to undertake a formal “inspection” of governance in Medicine Hat. The province has hired an independent expert to do the review, with a report expected in a few months.

In a New Year message on LinkedIn, City manager Mitchell expressed hopes for a better 2025. “Let us all bring civility back — there is no room for bullies in local government,” she wrote.

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.