It looks like city council is willing to support a call from citizens to bring recall legislation to local politics.
Accompanied by Helen Trevors, Elvena Slump presented a request that council support bringing such a resolution to the Union of B.C. Municipalities agenda in September.
“There are no means at the disposal of voters to change the direction of this council other than taking the city to court,” said Slump. “We need to have civic elections brought under the recall legislation that would give local residents … the ability to recall specific members of these councils if the need arises.”
In 2015, the UBCM convention passed such a resolution and forwarded it to the provincial government, which declined to take any action.
Slump said they collected about 3,000 signatures of Penticton voters asking for recall legislation during a three-month period in 2015. After the province rejected the recall concept, Slump said Penticton MLA Dan Ashton told her it was back in the hands of local governments.
Mayor Andrew Jakubeit said the resolution couldn’t be resubmitted to the Southern Interior Local Government Association, and then on to the UBCM, without changes.
However, Jakubeit and council supported having staff create an alternate resolution.
“There really is not many consequences for elected officials for breaches of integrity, ethics, confidentiality or conduct,” said Jakubeit, suggesting the new wording could focus on integrity.
Deadline for submissions to the annual SILGA conference is Feb. 24, but Jakubeit asked staff to have a resolution ready for council to review at their Feb. 21 meeting.
Council voted to submit two other resolutions to SILGA, one calling on the province to provide municipal and regional governments with an annual business registry census.
“The information is public but the ministry (Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services) has not been able to provide it to us in a comprehensive form, so we can only get one business at a time,” said corporate officer Dana Schmidt. “This is all about economic development initiatives and being able to know exactly what exists in the community today.”
Council passed the resolution unanimously and without discussion, as they did a resolution calling for the province to review statutory advertising requirements.
As it stands today, the local government act requires municipalities and regional districts to notify the public of pending changes or decisions through ads in newspapers, which in Penticton are delivered to the majority of households.
Schmidt said the request is in response to “technological advances of recent years.”
“This legislation was written for a long time ago, before we had social media, before we had websites, before we had a lot of things,” said Schmidt.
A similar resolution was passed at the 2015 UBCM, which the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development declined to act on, saying municipalities had the option to use other forms of media along with the required advertising.
“That is, a local government must still publish the notice in a newspaper, but may in addition, publish the notice in another way (e.g., on the internet),” reads the ministry response.
The SILGA 2017 convention takes place Apr. 25 to 28. If approved, the resolutions will be passed to the UBCM convention, Sept. 25-29.