SINGH – Why we should provide free meals for Kamloops City council

By ARJUN SINGH
The Kamloops Chronicle

IN LATE 2005, I was sworn in as a city councillor alongside a great group of Kamloopsians. After the installation ceremony, the city threw us a reception — quite a lavish one, actually. I wasn’t expecting it.

I wrote about it on my civic affairs blog, admitting I was  taken aback, but ultimately glad that members of my campaign team got to attend. I saw it as the city’s acknowledgment of their contributions to democracy.

Soon after, someone — via email or blog comment — accused me of being one of the “pigs at the trough.” That stung. It was a gentler time, and I wasn’t yet used to that kind of criticism.

Around the same time, I attended my first closed council meeting, which traditionally begins at noon with a working lunch. I passed on the sandwiches that day and sat there, a little stiff and uncomfortable, while my colleagues ate.

A week or so later, a council colleague invited me out for lunch downtown and came clean: he had been the one who sent the criticism — as a joke. He apologized. And I never skipped the council lunch again.

I tell this story because the question of whether to feed elected officials has again attracted some community interest. Darpan Sharma, who ran for council in 2022, for example, has made my support for free council meals — and occasionally dinners — a recurring point of criticism. So let me explain why I think this practice isn’t just reasonable. I think it’s genuinely important.

Before our current council’s dysfunction, those lunches did something no agenda item ever could: they gave us time with each other as human beings. It’s much easier to collaborate across real differences in values and politics when you know the person across the table — not just their vote, but their kids, their weekend plans, their love of fishing or hockey or the holiday season.

You don’t get that around the council table. You don’t get it in the middle of a heated debate. But at a lunch, I’ve watched councillors with different worldviews laugh together, find common ground, and build the kind of quiet trust that makes governance actually work.

There’s a saying in meeting culture that the best conversations happen at the cookie table. Council lunches are the cookie table.

There’s also a practical argument worth making. Council work has grown significantly — in scope, in hours, in public demands. Councillors are regularly asked to buy tickets to charity events and community fundraisers. We’re frankly probably not paying councillors enough.

That said, I understand the criticism. Many people bring their own lunch to work every day. Food bank usage is rising. Public belt-tightening is a real and reasonable expectation. These are fair points.

Maybe times do need to change. But I’d want us to be honest about what we’d be giving up. The informal time that council shares over a meal is, in my experience, one of the most effective relationship-building tools available to any governing body. Better relationships mean better collaboration. Better collaboration means better decisions for the city.

If we eliminate the free lunch, I genuinely wonder: what replaces it?

Arjun Singh is a former Kamloops City councillor and is currently the executive director of the Kamloops Local News Society, which publishes the Kamloops Chronicle. This column also appears in the May edition of the Chronicle. He can be contacted at info@kamloopschronicle.com.