Kamloops council unites against ‘disrespect’ in response to mayor’s committee changes

KAMLOOPS — On Friday (March 17), Kamloops city council fired back at Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson’s council committee changes as a unified group of eight. Standing in front of Hamer-Jackson’s seat at the council table, Coun. Katie Neustaeter, flanked by her colleagues, responded to the changes.

“While we, all eight Kamloops city councillors, would prefer to be doing the job that we have been elected to do by our citizens, we instead find ourselves again combating the chaotic and unpredictable behaviour of our mayor that leads to confusion and misinformation. This team, mostly strangers only months ago, remains united in our commitment to honest and transparent accountability to the citizens of Kamloops,” read Neustaeter.

The prepared statement from council also took time to address a number of false claims made by the mayor about council.

“No councillor you see before you today has ever expressed a desire to be ‘relieved of our workload.’ No councillor has ever expressed that they were ‘kind of overwhelmed.’ No chair has shown any ‘lack of commitment’ or has any conflict. No committee has only ‘two or three meetings booked for a full year,’ nor are we making changes to the job description to ‘relieve the deputy mayor of some duties,’” said Neustaeter.

While council is opposed to the unilateral changes made by the mayor, he is well within his power to do so. However, CAO David Trawin noted that council does have the ability to alter the committee terms of reference if they please.

“Council also determines the terms of reference. The mayor can determine who is on the committee, he can right now determine the chair, but council as a whole can change the terms of reference. Council can set the number of committee meetings they have in a year. Council can also set and determine whether the committee even actually makes recommendations to council or just feeds information up to council,” stated Trawin.

Trawin noted that, in the past, citizens have been added to committees in Kamloops through an open application process.

Council did not object to who was placed on the committees but how the process played out.

“In addition to disrespecting council, our great unease is primarily with a lack of a equitable application process, indifference for due diligence and best practice, a disregard for the impact to sensitive community partner requests, an absence of reassurance around confidentiality and the neglect of unbiased vetting,” said Neustaeter.

“While we, as councillors, have been subjected to repeated disrespect, violation of personal and professional boundaries, belittling and constantly disruptive behaviour by the mayor,” she continued, “we have been willing to absorb the impact in service to our community and in an attempt to have city business compromised as little as possible.”

Council has called for a special meeting of council for next Tuesday (March 21) to flesh out the issues.