EDITORIAL – City needs fewer appointments to the TNRD board

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

AN APPARENT OVERSIGHT on the part of Mayor Mike O’Reilly has been rectified. When he announced council appointments to the TNRD, there were eight names on the list. Seven of them were councillors who got the nod to sit on the regional district board as City directors. One, Kelly Hall, was named as an alternate. Seven others, including O’Reilly, were full-time appointments.

But, wait a minute, there was one name missing, namely Randy Sunderman, who must have been wondering if he was Joe Nobody, bottom rung on the ladder. Apparently, he or Jesse Ritcey made note of that fact when O’Reilly’s initial list came out.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the omission was rectified with a motion from Ritcey to add Sunderman as an alternate.

Not a huge deal, since alternates are seldom called upon. (By the way, the City’s TNRD reps are technically supposed to chosen by internal election. In practice, though, a council can override the election process with a policy of its own choosing, which is what Kamloops council has done by making the appointments based on how councillors finished in the election. That’s a way of avoiding the potential for internal strife, and I can attest that, in the past, there have been cases of hard feelings when the election method was used.)

However, there’s a more important issue when it comes to the City’s TNRD appointments, which is why Kamloops has seven directors on the regional board. There’s no practical reason for it.

Under provincial legislation, municipal appointments to regional district boards are based on population. The only municipality with more than one TNRD director is Kamloops. The other 10 municipalities (and 10 electoral areas), have only one director each. So Kamloops has seven times as many directors as any of the other jurisdictions.

Each TNRD director is given a certain number of “weighted” votes, again based on population. Those weighted votes apply only to budget matters, and seldom come into play. Nevertheless, the City has always enjoyed a majority vote on budgets.

Other than that, there’s really no purpose for a municipal member to have more than one director. This huge discrepancy can lead to a City vs. The Rest mentality within the board. And since City reps have little familiarity with issues in the rural areas and small municipalities, yet vote on matters affecting those places, it sets up an unfair distribution of power.

A few years ago, when the City’s population reached the point that it was entitled to another director, City council had an opportunity to say no. But it didn’t. It took the advice of its administration and accepted the additional appointment, further widening the gap between urban and rural influence.

Besides increasing the imbalance of power, another effect of adding another City director has been that Kamloops taxpayers have had to shell out an additional $18,000 a year, or $72,000 per term (on top of regular City council stipends), for that director.

The City could easily do with far fewer TNRD appointees than it currently enjoys. Two, or maybe three, would be a much more reasonable number. Anything above that simply results in more bloat to the board, which currently sits at 27 directors.

On another day, we’ll discuss why Kamloops City council doesn’t need eight councillors.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was 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.