FILE PHOTO - Kamloops mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson at a March 28, 2023 council meeting.

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

The mayor of Kamloops wants to go through city books with a fine-toothed comb and a newly envisioned committee, but it appears unlikely to get traction.

Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson tapped a local business owner to join him on the planned two-man audit committee with the goal of reviewing how taxpayer dollars are spent on city initiatives and staffing.

"This is something (administration) should want. Accountability," he said.

Hamer-Jackson said there has been "resistance" internally to the idea of what he describes as an "audit committee."

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But the city's corporate officer, Maria Mazzotta, said it's because the committee as he describes it legally can't be formed. Though mayors can create their own hand-picked committees, provincial legislation clearly restricts audit committee membership to council members only.

"I would characterize it as we are unclear as to the mayor's intent, because the name he has given to this committee has very clearly defined parameters in the Community Charter," Mazzotta said, disagreeing with the suggestion staff are resisting the mayor's idea.

She went on to say four of the five current committees are responsible for reviewing value for tax dollars, but Hamer-Jackson said he hasn't seen that happen.

"We've got an exterior auditor, yeah, but I don't think anything's being done internally," Hamer-Jackson said, though he doesn't sit on any council committees.

His partner behind the envisioned committee, Tim Senger, said it's all been "misunderstood."

"It is only to bring some oversight like any audit committee does, but it's not about doing a financial audit," he said. "It's more like a performance audit."

Senger said he and Hamer-Jackson met for the first time in January, connected through two of Hamer-Jackson's associates. Neither he nor Hamer-Jackson would say who those people were, but they tapped Senger when Hamer-Jackson raised the idea of forming his own internal auditing committee.

"They asked me about my willingness to go on a committee like this and of course I was all for it," he said.

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Senger said he has grown concerned about rising taxes in Kamloops, partly due to his business and due to residential taxes on a couple homes.

"I just feel like I'm getting squeezed more and more every year, and I know a lot of business owners in town and a lot of people that pay a lot of money in taxes and it's just never enough. Every time we turn around, somebody's reaching into our back pocket for more," he said. "And it's not just at a municipal level, but it's something that I can have an immediate effect on, or hope to."

Asked whether the idea mirrors Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the US, he said it would work differently, but there are similarities.

"I wouldn't say there is a significant difference, but I would say this idea came about before the whole DOGE thing was common. I was originally approached about this in mid-December," Senger said.

Whether it will ever come to fruition seems unlikely, but Hamer-Jackson remains firm on his desire to see the committee formed officially. He said he would review whether the city is seeing value for initiatives, citing the Noble Creek irrigation shutdown and the sale of the Northbridge Hotel property as examples, and staffing levels in city departments.

"I think we need more boots on the ground, not more managers managing managers," Hamer-Jackson said.

The last time Hamer-Jackson attempted to change committees was just months after the election and it set off one of the first major controversies of the term. Councillors responded by creating entirely new committees and Hamer-Jackson, in turn, refused to sit on any of them. 

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