Nanaimo City Council In-Camera Minutes

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City Council and City Staff Still Dragging Their Feet
Council Approves Spending $17,000 On More Consultants

At the Dec. 9 Council of the Whole meeting the subject of how this council handles in-camera meeting minutes was discussed again, and once again, it is unknown as to when they might actually agree on making public, decisions made in secret. Council has agreed to blow off another $17,500 engaging consultants to tell them how they should be doing their jobs. You would like to think that by the time you are in the $150,000/yr. + club you should know how to do your job. Council, well ....... not so much.

There may be some legitimate reasons why it has taken so long to decide on how to administer in-camera rules, the most logical being that neither city hall staff nor this council really knows what they are doing vis a vis the application of the in-camera rule. After all when you are paying the top wages in the province, you shouldn't expect too much expertise.

Another possible reason for council and staff dragging their feet has a more sinister twist to it, which I would be loathe to even consider being the case with our city staff or this council. However, a more sinister reason for wanting to keep such records secret is simply to avoid being open and transparent, which ultimately leads to being accountable for your decisions.

To this day, we do not know which councillors voted to spend $16,000,000 on a new city hall annex, which was built without ever going to a public tender. I have a one inch thick file of redacted information I was able to pry out of city hall after a nearly one year freedom of information exercise. While some interesting facts did come to light, I still don't know which council members supported that questionable decision, although I do now know the first time council voted on it, it was rejected. I still don't know how they decided how much the old annex would cost to upgrade, since they never sought a bona fide offer to do the work.

Readers of this blog will know there are far too many unanswered questions about that $16,000,000 decision that need answering. Unfortunately both the city manager and assistant city manager in charge at the time, are no longer in the city's employ so holding them accountable could be difficult.

The whole city hall annex business should be the subject of a full scale forensic audit, and a full examination of all these minutes everyone is so desperate to keep hidden. Wonder why?

A more recent 'issue' which needs bringing out into the light was the in-camera decisions which led to the year-long Colliery Dams Debacle. Just exactly what information was presented to council? Just what were the 'facts' which led to this very poor decision? I remember seeing in the press it would cost $30 million to replace them, and we had a 40% chance of failure in 50 years, when the public first heard the 'story'.

Deciding when to release in-camera minutes should not be rocket science, nor the subject for another $10,000 study of some kind. As former mayor Gary Korpan explained to me, 'when the reason for secrecy has passed, the minutes should be released'.

That is an opinion I would argue most people who actually respect democracy would subscribe to, and only those with something to hide would fear.