Image Credit: The Office of the Mayor

OPINION

People are going to start to think I don’t like Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas, since I really haven't had anything good to say about him.

That’s not really true. I will say this: He’s been Kelowna’s best mayor of the past 10 years.

All right, his only competition is Colin Basran and I’ll remind you of a couple of the reasons Tom wanted him gone.

It’s not actually that easy to find since Tom tried to wipe his campaign webpage, perhaps knowing what was coming, but I found his announcements anyway.

Marshall Jones, managing editor

Here was Tom’s criticism of Basran from September 2022.

“Kelowna’s taxpayers deserve to have their hard-earned money respected and used for the betterment of our community not to promote the image and personality of their Mayor.”

Tom and I shared the idea that it was getting unseemly just how much city communications continued to push Basran out front on everything and more so as the campaign neared. Tom’s campaign figured the city spent $74,321 on external contracts to create videos in two years despite having 14 communications people on staff (it’s actually higher than that but we’ll go with Tom’s numbers).

“As Kelowna’s next Mayor I will commit to banning all City of Kelowna advertising spend not related to public safety, community engagement and consultation, or required advertising by upper levels of government,” Dyas said.

You think you know where this is going, but you’d be wrong.

As far as I can tell, the city does not hire anymore contractors to produce and boost videos of Mayor Tom Dyas.

Instead, he and city manager Doug Gilchrist have institutionalized it.

Dyas doesn’t have to hire contractors because he has his own communications staff now. He has someone to write all his speeches and press releases and shoot videos of him — not the City of Kelowna, not council — just Mayor Tom Dyas.

OH, BUT WAIT, don’t get this wrong. When I started asking questions about when Kelowna got an Office of the Mayor with its own staff, his assistant called me right away to make sure I had this right.

The Mayor doesn’t have his own staff — those are City Manager staff, assigned to work for the mayor. Indeed when I asked to speak to the mayor about all this, it was the City Manager who responded by email.

The City of Kelowna loves to whittle at such fine points, but it’s a silly point. He only works for the mayor and every mayor elected from here on out will demand the same thing.

The city spent $35,000 per year in contracts boosting Basran? Hold Tom's beer, watch him cook. He had a chance to end it, instead he made sure taxpayers will pay to boost their top elected official over rival candidates in perpetuity!

Look, I don’t really care. I think it makes sense to have a mayor’s office and it makes sense to have his own communications staff that don’t get mixed up with regular city business.

But Tom’s the one who campaigned on it.

“I am running to be Kelowna’s next Mayor because I can see so many of the critical issues facing our city failing to be addressed, not because I want to boost my own image.”

Uh huh. Says the guy who thinks only he should speak about city business and councillors should hold their elected opinions and yield to him on nearly everything.

Remember his complaints about the four per cent budgets? Mayor Tom’s Kelowna averaged 4.28% yearly tax increases. Basran’s last four years averaged 3.99%. The city budget went up from $777 million in Tom’s first year to $908 million in 2025.

This was the right wing chamber business candidate put up to defeat Basran, remember.

I don’t have any problem with that either. Kelowna pushed through steady four per cent budgets when everyone else, like Penticton, bought into ‘austerity’ that is biting them in the arse now. Kelowna is a well-oiled machine compared to many others.

But it was Tom Dyas who “commit(ted) to hiring an external third-party to undertake a line-by-line audit of the City’s finances."

“Over the last eight years property taxes have increased 30% and development charges have increased by tens of thousands of dollars — yet we haven’t seen drastic improvements to infrastructure or services as a result,” he said. 

That didn’t happen. As far as I can tell, it was never mentioned again.

To be fair, he seems hell-bent and busy on a plan but one I never heard him speak about once in the campaign.

He is leading the City of Kelowna away from regional functions like planning for transportation or RCMP, regional emergency operations and other functions which might make some sense, though whatever strategy this is is mostly behind closed doors.

But the “open for business” city that relies so much on tourism is also gearing up to charge non-residents extra to use some facilities, like the new Parkinson Recreation Centre or H20 or who knows what else.

Good luck meeting your business plans when neighbours find the smell disagreeable and turn away. Are you going to charge tourists more?

We’ve got 11 months to the next election and I’d say Tom’s pretty vulnerable.

He hasn’t really set himself apart, doesn’t bring a lot of excitement. That’s how I like my municipal politicians, personally, but I don’t see him faring well against a juiced up base for a new candidate — even Ron Cannan or Loyal Wooldridge.

I can’t think of a politician more in need of a scandal, something to remind people he exists.

Same, old, typical hypocrisy won’t cut it.

— Marshall Jones is the editor of iNFOnews.ca

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