cc'd to Nanaimo City Councillors on March 18.
Fair play and due process
Mayor Krog,
I’m concerned that at the recent public hearing to decide on the rezoning application for the Long Lake Nursery site, you crossed a line. I have an unease about it and here’s why:
It has been widely reported that you spoke after all Councillors had expressed support for or denial of the rezoning; that five Councillors had expressed opposition to the rezoning; that in your remarks you expressed intent to change minds. That’s the line crossed.
You have the right to a vote, the right to contribute persuasively to the discussion hoping to influence the outcome. Importantly you also have unique responsibilities as Mayor. Appealing for Councillors to change their mind, after they had expressed their positions, is an abuse of your role as Mayor. The Mayor is not the party whip. An expression of the will of Council was on the table, fair play to offer an influential counter argument and hope your point of view prevails. Fair play to exercise your vote in favour of the rezoning. But in making the appeal you did harm.
Consider the consequences in reputations damaged (any Councillor swayed by your oratory would risk, undeservedly no doubt, being seen as indecisive); to Council’s collaborative team-building culture; to the public trust that our affairs are being decided in a 100% fair and open environment, free of manipulation.
And consider too the opportunity lost to exercise the important leadership role of the municipal Mayor; to make it clear that whatever the outcome of the vote, although you remain in favour of the rezoning, you would be 100% supportive of the will of Council.
In public perception now there’s the risk that this rezoning and subsequent commercial construction on the property will be known not as the will of Council but as the will of the Mayor.
Frank Murphy
Frank Murphy
It is ironic that the only Council meeting at which the public is legislatively mandated to be able to give comment is, via the Local Government Act, a Public Hearing. The public is permitted to speak at other Council meetings at Council's discretion. Yet Public Hearings are the only meetings of Council which are NOT available either live on video or recorded... How does this happen??
ReplyDeleteI attended Thursday's Public Hearing and heard each Councillor give their detailed reasoning and then vote for or against permitting the car dealership against the advice of City Staff. The stated vote when Mayor Krog began his lecture was five against and three for permitting the dealership. I had to leave soon after the Mayor began but did hear him speak forcefully for the dealership and hoping that a Councilor would change their vote. He represented that it was necessary for a new engine to bring out of towners to Nanaimo to visit the only Porsche dealership on the Island north of Victoria (and ignoring the fact that the project proponent was careful to point out that as of that moment they did not have authorization for a Porsche dealership in Nanaimo).
I left the meeting knowing that the vote for the change had been lost. Imagine my surprise when I could not find a video of the meeting the next day after reading On Facebook that Staff had somehow lost to the Mayor's eloquence. And to find no video record of the meeting to discover the alchemy which had changed a mind, and to determine how this could happen as what I heard before I left was clearly a voting situation. Was a second vote called for? And if so by what means and by who?? Now I find I am only left with opinions and rumours rather than a record. This situation should be fixed … and soon..
In examining the records I find that while the City's Procedure Bylaw discusses Public Hearings, the Community Charter does not and one must go back to the Local Government Act (Sections 464 to 470) to determine the basic rules around a Public Hearing.
A Council which proposes to include the governed in governance should include videos of Public Hearings among the other public Council meetings captured on video... and should approach the Provincial government to make the Council's video records into public records...