Citing a shopping list of complaints about Victoria city council, a local watchdog group says it’s time for the province to permit voters to fire municipal councillors.
“People are angry. They’re dispirited with local government and the City of Victoria council in particular,” said Stan Bartlett chair of the Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria, in his call for the province to introduce recall legislation for municipal councillors.
Other than writing letters of complaint to newspapers, complaining on talk radio or emailing councillors directly, there’s little that can be done except to wait for the four-year term to run out, Bartlett said.
Recall legislation similar to provincial recall legislation would give frustrated taxpayers an option “when faced with the lack of competence of a council, policies that are completely at odds with most of the public, or a fractured governance model,” Bartlett says.
“If you’re a provincial taxpayer, there are checks and balances. There is recall legislation, of course. The opposition can filibuster or bring down the government in a vote of non-confidence and so on, so there are some checks and balances,” he said
“There are not sufficient options at a municipal level.”
Calling Victoria council “an overtly populist and partisan government,” he cited issues that have frustrated residents, including council’s affordable-housing and rental-housing policies, police budget issues, Coun. Laurel Collins vying for a federal seat only months after being elected to council, $2 million spent on a Crystal Pool replacement project that may never be built as designed, attempts to ban horse-drawn carriages from downtown, and lack of a new location for the Sir John A. MacDonald statue removed from the steps of city hall.
“They seem to operate in an alternate universe,” Bartlett said. “They seem to be in a permanent state of distraction and ill-advised decisions.”
But there’s a huge difference between politics and incompetence, said former Victoria councillor Chris Coleman.
“If it’s just about: ‘I’m mad at them. I don’t like the direction they’re going,’ that’s political. Frankly, your group lost an election. You correct that in the electoral process,” said Coleman.
“I’m always cautious to go toward recall because it tends to be personal and political. It should be extraordinary, which is why the ones we’ve seen in the past provincially have a high threshold to succeed. It’s not just about not liking somebody.”
Michael Prince, Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy at the University of Victoria, agreed.
“This to me is like sour grapes democracy,” said Prince. “A group won that these Grumpy Taxpayer$ didn’t like — they clearly didn’t vote for the bloc, I’m sure — and this is kind of a blunt instrument.”
Under the province’s recall law, voters can remove an MLA from office if they collect signatures from at least 40 per cent of eligible voters in the MLA’s riding during a 60-day campaign.
Bartlett said Victoria council often seems distracted — dealing with everything from Quebec’s Bill 21 to the appropriateness of Christmas poinsettias rather than focusing on the basics of potholes and downtown’s cleanliness.
“I see a downtown that’s dirty. I see a community that’s got a lot of potholes. I see a lot of divisiveness that’s being fostered out of council. It’s unacceptable,” he said.
Exactly which councillors he would recommend for recall, Bartlett said, “is up to the ratepayers.”
“I think they have to be reminded that we are their employer and that they were elected to represent everybody’s interest.”
Pointing to the circus that was the previous Nanaimo council, Bartlett admits the province seems reluctant to intervene in the operations of municipal councils
“There just doesn’t seem to be any end to it. I think the dilemma for local taxpayers is the province is very reluctant to weigh in on municipal dysfunction, as with the case with Nanaimo. That’s the shining example. They had a meltdown for years and the province didn’t wade in,” he said.
“At what point does the province weigh in on what’s going on here in Victoria?”
