Kamloops Mayor-elect Reid Hamer-Jackson

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

After winning election as the next mayor of Kamloops, Reid Hamer-Jackson went on the attack against Community and Protective Services director Byron McCorkell and Coun. Dale Bass.

Maybe he should have talked to George Cuff first.

“That, to me, is a sad commentary by the mayor of a very nice city,” Cuff told iNFOnews.ca. “I think that’s absolutely sad. It’s unnecessary. It’s demeaning. It’s going past the post. If that’s how you’re starting, you’re off to a bad start.”

Cuff should know.

He’s a nationally recognized authority on how locally elected officials should behave once they’re in office.

He and former Kelowna City Manager Ron Mattiussi are two of the key people currently travelling B.C. to provide orientation sessions for local councils and regional district boards who were elected on Oct. 15.

“The mayor and council is supposed to deal with the CAO, not with department heads, not with individual employees, not with someone who gave them a bylaw ticket three years ago,” Cuff said.

That’s because, under B.C. laws, local governments operate under a “weak mayor” system, as opposed to the “strong mayor” approach taken in the U.S.

READ MORE: Don’t expect sweeping change from new mayors in Kamloops, Okanagan

“One of the things about these strong mayor systems they have in the United States is that the mayor appoints all the department heads and the Chief Administrative Officer of the municipality,” Vancouver lawyer Bill Buholzer told iNFOnews.ca. “Usually, when there’s a change of mayor, there’s a complete clearing out of the upper echelons of the civil service and the mayor appoints their chosen individuals.”

Buholzer, who is an associate (semi-retired) lawyer with Young, Anderson Barristers and Solicitors, wrote a paper giving a legal perspective of mayors’ responsibilities that he presented to the B.C. Mayors Caucus in 2013.

Since then, virtually nothing has changed in the structure of local governments in B.C.

Where things are changing is in Ontario where the provincial government passed its 'Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, 2022' on Sept. 8.

It only applies to Toronto and Ottawa and gives those mayors powers similar, but not as great as, those in the U.S., ostensibly in the interest of speeding up housing construction in that province’s two largest cities.

The Ontario mayors will be able to hire certain department heads and the CAO, draft the budget and veto bylaws passed by council that “could potentially interfere with a provincial priority.”

Council can amend the mayor’s budget but the mayor can veto those changes.

The mayors’ power is not absolute since council can, with a two-thirds majority vote, override the veto.

In B.C., mayors cannot tell staff what to do without the support of council and, in cities like Kamloops and Kelowna, council only has power to hire and fire CAOs, not department heads.

So, given the limited power these mayors have, how do they justify a full-time position, often at or above $100,000 a year?

“The mayor is the face and voice and eyes of the community,” Cuff said. “The mayor is going to be out, presumably, meeting with community groups, attending anniversary functions, representing the city to other levels of government, talking to the CAO about what’s coming next on the agenda, getting briefed by the clerk, talking to their allies and members of council to find out what their concerns are. There’s a lot of things that a mayor can do to fill that time.”

Buholzer says the mayors should be working with staff on setting the agenda for each meeting.

In reality, when Mattiussi worked for the City of Kelowna, it was City Clerk Stephen Fleming who put the agenda together then the two men would go through it with the mayor, refreshing their memories on things like rezoning applications that may be coming back months after council first saw them.

“The mayor meets with people,” Mattiussi said, noting that can take a huge amount of time. “The mayor meets with the city manager, maybe with committees and goes to the regional district.”

Given that the mayor is the face of the city and meets with a lot of people, Cuff has four key things every mayor needs to know about their role in government.

“The number one role of the mayor is leadership,” he said. “That means being able to identify new ideas and being able to rally the troops to your particular point of view.”

Secondly, the mayor has to represent the broader community.

“The representation role says: I got elected by a whole bunch of people from across all sections of the community,” Cuff said. “I didn’t get elected by the Chamber of Commerce. I didn’t get elected by the Sierra Club. I didn’t get elected by my church group. I didn’t get elected by minor hockey. I got elected by the community so my job is to represent the community, appeal to the community and make sure that’s my focus from now until the end of my term of office.”

Next up is governance.

“Providing good governance says you understand good corporate decision-making,” Cuff said. “You understand the fact that this is a team sport. You understand the fact that you need a majority on council for anything to happen, otherwise you’re blowing in the wind.”

Finally, mayors are agents of change and should be presenting a vision for the future for their cities.

“Sometimes they don’t show much leadership and they tend to follow along with what’s been done before, which is a bit ironic because they’re guided by the city clerk and staff who say: 'This is what we did last time. Hopefully you guys will do the same thing,'" Cuff said.

READ MORE: Frustration changed local governments in Kamloops, Okanagan

That doesn’t mean elected councillors can just sit back and coast.

“If you’re a weak council, you might say yes to everything,” Cuff said. “If you’re an aggressive, assertive council, you might challenge a number of things. That doesn’t mean the CAO is wrong. It just means you’ve got a different political take on a particular issue. That’s all it means. You would be absolutely foolish not to ask for the advice of your CAO.”

Whether it’s the mayor or individual councillors, building a good relationship with the CAO is critical.

“You can have very poor mayor-CAO relationships because the mayor doesn’t like the fact that the current CAO was supportive of the last mayor,” Cuff said. “Well, what did you want the CAO to be? Of course they’re going to be supportive. But, there’s a difference between being supportive and being a buddy. That’s the last thing you want is a buddy relationship between a mayor and CAO. Or even between the CAO and anybody on council. This is a colleague relationship. The CAO is going to be your best advisor. Whether you accept the advice or not, that’s up to council.”

One key role for councillors is to exercise oversight over staff to make sure they are doing their jobs properly and handling finances properly.

“They (councillors) not only should have policies in place but they also have access to the city auditor,” Cuff said. “They should be saying to the auditor that we want you to review the CAO’s expense processes over the course of the last year and, by the way, while you’re at it, you can also take a look at the expense accounts of the mayor and two members of council plus two other department heads.

“The auditor is not an auditor for the Director of Finance. The auditor’s not there for the CAO. The auditor’s there representing the outside professional view of the city’s corporate body and that’s a council responsibility. Any council that doesn’t meet with the auditor at least once a year is being absolutely foolish.”

Cuff will be doing the orientation for Kelowna councillors, and other elected bodies in the Thompson-Okanagan region, but neither he nor Mattiussi will be briefing City of Kamloops elected officials, including Hamer-Jackson.

READ MORE: One relationship already threatening to test new Kamloops council

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