Tuesday, November 22, 2016

McBride 2nd BC Local Gov't to suffer multiple Council resignations...

After the District of Lantzville, a small community north of Nanaimo, went through mass resignations of 4 Councillors' there last year, the small village of McBride, about 2 hours east of Prince George, becomes just the 2nd community in BC to have a majority of its Council to resign en masse since the start of the 2014-18 term for local governments in BC.  Read more from 250News.com here

Former Saanich Mayor and now Chair of the Agriculture Land Commission, Frank Leonard, commented on Twitter last week that it may be time to review the 4 year term as one possible irritant.  However, I think the situations in Lantzville and McBride are more indicative of personality conflict within these two Councils' when you see mass resignations of Council members constituting a quorum of the aforementioned Municipal Councils'.

When you have personality conflicts in local governments, there needs to be a recognition among all parties that:

a) A problem exists
b) We (Council) are committed to fixing the problem, in the best interest of the community

And NO amount of training will bridge a divide that big when there is such 'cemented' views on a local government, whether a village, town or city council; regional district board or board of education

Meanwhile - BC's Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Peter Fassbender tells the Prince George Citizen that the remaining Council members - McBride Mayor Loranne Martin and the remaining Councillor Rick Thompson - should only act in a "caretaker" capacity until he makes a decision on the situation - declare Martin/Thompson as "official Council quorum" or appoint persons to the vacant Council seats (3) however Minister Fassbender recognizes that a decision from his Ministry needs to occur in fairly short order.  Read more here

I personally hope that the community of McBride is able to, in short order, return to a full complement of 5 Council members and get on with the business of governing for the community

~SF

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