Should councillor be a full-time job locally?

Previous mayor Ken Christian limited public inquiry appearances to five minutes per person.

Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson believes the salary earned by city councillors is enough to warrant fulltime duties.

Officially, the mayoral seat on council is the only full-time position, paying a little more than $115,000 a year according to the city’s 2021 statements of financial information (SOFI). The eight councillor positions are considered part-time, and were paid just under $42,000 per year in 2021. In addition, six of eight councillors are appointed to the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board as city directors, earning them an additional $15,135 per year in pay, according to TNRD chief administrative officer Scott Hildebrand.

Hamer-Jackson’s view on councillor pay and workload came on Feb. 8 during his monthly Reider’s Digest segment on Kamloops Last Week, KTW’s weekly webcast/ podcast.

The mayor was commenting on a motion Coun. Dale Bass will introduce at the Feb. 28 council meeting, seeking to limit each member of the public to five minutes of questions during the public inquiry portion at the beginning of each regular council meeting.

The notice of motion came about as a result of a marathon 4.5-hour council meeting on Jan. 31 — a meeting that included a lengthy public inquiry session during which Hamer-Jackson said there would be no time limit.

Retraction

Bass has said council is charged with undertaking the business of the city during council meetings, noting the Jan. 31 meeting was part of a long day for council (which also had an in-camera meeting and a public hearing that day and night).

Bass told KTW the problem with Hamer-Jackson’s rationale is the job is described as parttime. Half of the eight council members — Katie Neustaeter, Stephen Karpuk, Mike O’Reilly and Margot Middleton — have day jobs and the other four are retired.

“For him to declare that we should be working full-time is putting at least half of my colleagues lives in flux because they have day jobs,” Bass said, arguing that if the job was fulltime, it wouldn’t represent the diversity of the population.

“It would be a council of retirees, rich people or business owners who don’t have to report in for work every day,” she said, noting young people wouldn’t have time to hold office.

Councillors Margot Middleton and Mike O’Reilly also said they view the job as a part-time commitment.

O’Reilly said councillors are working more than 40 hours a week before factoring in time to participate in public events.

“That [part of the job] becomes reduced when you have so many hours in council meetings,” he said.

Hamer-Jackson said he will not support Bass’s motion and asked how he could limit the public’s time speaking when he allowed ASK Wellness Society representatives 30 minutes at the microphone this past November. As mayor and chair of council meetings, he said he can cut speakers off when required.

A story in the Feb. 8 print edition of Kamloops This Week included information that should have not ran with the article.

The story (‘Cllémentem is as good as it gets’) included interviews with some of the city’s homeless population as KTW sought their opinion on what the Cllémentem ministorage facility downtown means to them in light of the city undertaking a review of its operations due to concerns including open drug use, jaywalking and vandalism.

On the subject of long days, cited by Bass, Hamer-Jackson referenced councillor pay.

“I don’t consider making $42,000 a year, and if you’re on the TNRD, I don’t know how much it is, but making over $55,000, or $42,000, I don’t know how that became such a part-time job,” Hamer-Jackson said. “We only have council Tuesday — and it isn’t even every week. And it can go from this time to 11 o’clock at night, so I don’t know why people are scheduling appointments on council or mayor through that, at that time. Again, I feel that it should be more of a full-time position than part-time.”

Bass said the idea meetings can go until 11 p.m. is “nonsense,” noting such long days are draining on staff and council.

“You start fading in the 13th hour of, quite literally, backto-back-to-back meetings,” O’Reilly said.

Middleton and O’Reilly said they try to avoid scheduling other business on Tuesdays.

O’Reilly said Tuesday meetings need to be kept to related city business, but suggested council could consider more town hall meetings for added public feedback. Middleton said she is in favour of time limits on public input during council meetings as there is no control over how many people will want to speak.

One of the subjects in the story spoke of how he used the facility and included statements relating to one of his former wives as he explained his movement from prison to a shelter and to the street.

The allegations made by the story subject were unsubstantiated and have been denied by a member of the family of his former wife. The comments should not have been included in the print article and KTW apologizes for the fact they were.