Street Level

If anyone needs a reason why Kamloops should consider a ward system, just do the math.

According to the 2006 StatsCan census, there are 33,500 people living on the North Shore and 42,676 on the South Shore.

If every single voter on the North Shore went into the polling station on Nov. 15 and picked the same eight names for councillor and all the voters on the South Shore did the same thing, choosing eight other names, the South Shore would determine the makeup of the next city council.

Want another reason?

Only one councillor — Joe Leong — lives on the North Shore. All the others, including the mayor, are on the other side of the river, most of them downtown or in Sahali.

Here’s yet another reason.

In the nine North Shore polling stations, Leong outpolled Arjun Singh in eight of them and Peter Milobar in four. Yet, at the end of election day in 2005, Leong finished 43 votes behind Singh and 1,364 votes behind Milobar.

If wards had existed in 2005, it’s likely Peter Sharp might have retained his seat, since he came in as high as fourth in one poll, seventh in two more and eighth in two others.

By this point in the column, if he’s reading it, I’m sure John O’Fee is already writing another e-mail because we’ve been engaged in an interesting dialogue in recent weeks about the idea of a ward system.

To me, it makes sense. It’s the ultimate representation by population concept. To O’Fee — and most others sitting around that horseshoe every Tuesday — you don’t have to live in a neighbourhood to care about it.

In fact, O’Fee, in one of the e-mails he’s sent, said it’s offensive to suggest that “one doesn’t care about an area of town unless one lives there.”

Sorry to offend, then, but you do have to live in an area to understand it, to know what makes it work and what disrupts its community feeling.

You need to be seen by your community as one of them, someone who walks those sidewalks that need repairing, who notices the streetlights that have burned out and not been replaced and who can at least understand — and perhaps explain to other council members — why some projects the city approves aren’t met with overwhelming gratitude in some neighbourhoods.

The buzzword with this council and others like it is “consensus.”

Everybody talks about an issue and then, through some divine intervention, they all come to a decision.

It’s a good theory, but one could argue, consensus isn’t always to be found with a council that has Singh as a member.

He thinks outside the box — way outside sometimes — and too often during this council’s term he’s been criticized or belittled for his ideas.

That’s not consensus to me.

Terry Lake has said an at-large election system can benefit by having strong neighbourhood associations to identify needs.

Can anyone name a truly strong neighbourhood association in Kamloops?

They tend to spring up around issues — always contentious ones — and then, when the dust settles, so does the time and energy involved to keep an association viable and really doing something beneficial for the area.

There are strong associations in the city that influence city council, but they’re not neighbourhood-based.

They’re business-improvement associations and, when they show up at a council meeting, or host a golf tournament, you can bet the politicians pay heed.

Finally, if you need another reason why a ward system should be considered in Kamloops, there’s always that issue we don’t like to talk about — money.

A citywide campaign costs a lot of cash; mayoralty candidate Murphy Kennedy estimates he’ll spend up to $30,000 in his run for the mayor’s seat.

In 2005, Singh and Jim Harker each spent around $5,000, an amount the average Joe Citizen might find a bit daunting.

Having a smaller area in which to campaign would make it easier for some of those people out there who care about their city and want to get involved, but just can’t afford to put their names up for nomination.

Until then, though, expect to continue hearing a ward system wouldn’t be good for the city. It’s in the interests of the people who we keep electing to ensure the system doesn’t change.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 11:31 a.m. Comments