REID ALL ABOUT IT – ‘Mayor of Chaos’ rehashes a lot of very old news
An occasional update on the fascinating mayoral life of Reid Hamer-Jackson, including what the media are saying.
BIG ARTICLE in The Tyee today (Oct. 8, 2025) headlined ‘Mayor of Chaos: How Kamloops Politics Became Infamous.’ It is an exceedingly long rehash — the length being a clue that it’s probably intended for entry into next year’s Webster journalism awards — and often tedious.
The byline is shared by Tyee editor Tyler Olsen and Castanet reporter Kristen Holliday, the latter a regular writer about Kamloops City Hall and Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson. The article is repeated on the Castanet website.
It begins in a manner that’s more balanced than much of the everyday local coverage of our hapless mayor but in the bottom half reverts to the usual easy-target shots and fault-finding.
For example, the article notes that Hamer-Jackson has been accused of bullying and threatening to fire former City CAO David Trawin but omits the fact Trawin acknowledged in writing that the mayor had never made any such threat, glorifies the deeply flawed Braun report, and ignores the convenient release of inside stuff by councillors when it was unfavourable to the mayor. It also characterizes the infamous Tapegate shouting match as being a two-sided incident, when the tape makes it clear Coun. Bill Sarai was the verbal aggressor.
That’s all quite unfortunate because Olsen and Holliday do write in a readable style, and could have brought some fresh perspective to the City Hall gong show. Instead, we’re served up the same old shallow litany.
It’s odd, by the way, that CFJC-TV chose to do its own recap of the article and put it at the top of its newscast tonight.
The fact that ‘Mayor of Chaos’ is part one of a two-part series — the next instalment being about plans by the provincial government to curb dysfunction in municipal government — is another hint that this bit of writing is aimed towards awards season rather than attempting anything resembling insightful journalism.
— Mel Rothenburger.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Contrary to the claims of the “Chaos” article, there are remedies for street disorder within the jurisdiction of a municipal government. Zoning is a big one. But despite all the problems experienced by home and business owners in the vicinity of wet shelters (where drug and alcohol use is allowed) and against the mayor’s pleas, the current council continues to approve zoning variances to allow wet shelters. Why?
The article said getting the highest percent of the vote was “all it took for [Hamer-Jackson] to become mayor.” So? That’s all it takes for anyone to be elected. As for the claim that “Hamer-Jackson won while receiving fewer votes than all eight successful council candidates.” This is simple math. The ballot gave each council candidate an 8/23 chance of being elected while the mayoral candidates had only a 1/5 chance of being elected.
The article makes much of ASK’s early threat of legal action. Nothing came of it but it’s been used as a club throughout the mayor’s term to keep him from discussions and votes about social housing and street disorder in Kamloops.
The article’s nasty innuendo in the claim “he was wielding — and vastly overstepping — his new mayoral powers to protect his own personal business” is even more of a hack job since it ignores that CAO Trawin investigated and found that charge to be baseless.
Coun. Katie Neustaeter also engaged in nasty innuendo when she threatened the mayor that 10 citizens could petition the court to remove him from office and then two months later read out a statement to media accusing the mayor of “violating personal boundaries.”
When asked if there had been a meeting to draft that statement, Neustaeter claimed there was not. A Code of Conduct complaint that this was misleading was investigated by Harding, who reasoned that because fewer than four councillors were involved in discussion of the statement wording at a time (though all agreed to the final draft), quorum had never been achieved in any one email, so technically there was no meeting.
No wonder the mayor doesn’t trust Harding.
The article’s admission that Coun. Bill Sarai secretly taped a conversation with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson early in his term, then lied about it to use it against the mayor ignores the fact that though the full tape showed Sarai as the main yeller, “an unknown person filed a complaint that the mayor acted inappropriately in the workplace.” But not Sarai?
Getting the BC Attorney-General involved because the mayor leaked a report which had already been leaked by persons unknown at city hall the year before was ridiculous.
No wonder the mayor feels picked on. He has been, endlessly and ruthlessly, as evidenced most recently by this shamefully biased article.
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RHJ notwithstanding, There have been the same number of instances available to Tim Petruk as there were for The Armchair mayor in regards to writing critiques of City Hall’ decisions. Nothing of sorts has ever occurred though. Isn’t that journalistic apathy?
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Thanks, Mel.
It appears that Kristen is now a regional editor. Perhaps she is trying to achieve an award. However, if reducing a man (Reid) to a road kill deserves an award for journalism, then maybe the world is in a lot of trouble.
I once sent an email to her asking why she didn’t write anything with balanced journalism. The reply wasn’t quite what I expected but it did allow me to form a more solid base for my opinion of her as a “journalist”.
One might wonder if she actually gets paid for what she writes. There must be some talent there but maybe her outlook is very biased and she can see through only clouded lenses. One might ask if there is a problem with maturity and that may be a question that should be asked.
She may retain her perch on the upper back berth in council chambers and come and go without her bags being searched. I suppose that some benefits are gained when one is a “journalist”. I hope she someday builds up the courage to have a face to face interview with “the little old lady in a purple sweater who carries a walking stick”.
Kristen actually might learn something new.
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Don’t sugarcoat it Mel, tell us what you really thought of this trite!
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