Should Prince George join Vancouver and Surrey and hire an independent ethics commissioner?
And the Christmas tree is not going up on the Coast Hotel
Let’s kick things off with some comments from readers, starting with two responses to yesterday’s Reddit thread on the bus simply not coming for people waiting at Costco.
I don't ride the bus; I avoid it. But I actually enjoy riding transit. You get a warm ride and you can read and not have to find parking. Our transit system sucks so badly, though, that any possible benefit is cancelled out by how bad it is. (I of course have all the solutions, but the city has never implemented any of my suggestions, so I remain an avid non-rider.)
On the more positive side, Phil emails to say:
I moved to Prince George a year ago from Burlington-Oakville area in Ontario. I had been using the bus service there for several years and loved it. You could always go onto Google Maps and it would tell you when and where the buses were coming and if they were delayed.
I have been most impressed since I moved here. I find it amazing that the system will tell me as it did yesterday that the bus I wanted to take is delayed by three minutes — doesn’t tell me why but it tells me it’s coming and when.
I read with alarm your reader’s story. I’m sorry he had such a bad experience so early on in his life Prince George. If he persists, I’m quite sure he will be pleased, long-term.
I have also found the bus drivers to be extremely helpful. As an added bonus in the last few weeks, I think almost half the buses I’ve taken had broken ticket takers, so my rides were free. I think the bus service is amazing.
Thanks for that perspective!
I also got this email from Paul Sanborn:
Apropos of your coverage of the continuing drought, this is my favourite vignette (from a recent walk at the Nechako-Fraser junction):
Send me pictures your river finds!
There won’t be a tree on the roof of the Coast this year
For those of you who are newish to the city, you may not be aware of the tradition of sticking a giant Christmast tree on the top of the Coast hotel downtown and having it light up more and more as more people donate to charitable causes associated with it. Here’s a pic I took of it going up a few years ago:
However, the rooftop tradition is off this year, as per an email from United Way, who took over the campaign a few years back after it briefly disappeared:
This tree has traditionally been a 50–60-foot tree raised to be lit atop a 10-story hotel in downtown Prince George, but this year, UW in Northern BC was challenged to find enough volunteers to support the investment of time and effort required to light the tree atop the roof – often in inclement weather. So, to ensure that United Way can continue to provide critical supports in the community, we have moved the Tree of Lights to inside same hotel that has hosted the tree for over 30 years – the Coast Prince George Hotel by APA. This allows more connection with the community directly with the hope and spirit of the Tree itself. We are excited to bring a new iteration of the iconic Tree of Lights to Prince George!
There will be a kick-off event this Saturday from 9 until 3.
Does the city need an ethics commissioner (and is it worth the price)?
OK, so as promised here is my write-up on the very long discussion about the new council code of conduct policy that was held during Monday’s meeting. Basically, the code of conduct — which was first adopted in 2013 — provides guidelines for how councillors and the mayor should conduct themselves, and measures for remediation and/or punishment if they don’t live up to that code. This can cover things like not going directly to staff members to ask for help with projects (because staff need to get their priorities from the city manager and having a councillor or mayor give them side quests can put them in difficult positions) to not repeatedly turning your back on someone everytime they talk (a real example given from another city during the discussion). Codes of conduct are getting increasingly popular as municipal government becomes both more professional and, in some cases, more divided than in the past.
For the most part, this was a straightforward, if in-depth, discussion. Various councillors had specific questions about specific parts of the policy, like whether a provision around avoiding political activity needed to be more clearly worded given that running a city is inherently political. There were also questions about if the code would apply to personal lives — the example given is, what if your kids go to the same school as a parks employee, is it ok to talk about city business if you run into them at a school function? The answer was probably, but not if it then turned into you giving that person more work to do.
A regular message from the folks who developed the policy — led by lawyer Reece Harding — was that “codes are not meant to be gotcha documents” but more lay out generalized terms for how councillors (including the mayor) can behave in a way that is professional. He also emphasized the desire to have lots of “off-ramps” — that is, ways for investigators, if they are brought in because of a complaint about misconduct — can find to resolve the issue that doesn’t immediately jump to punishment (punishments can include things like removing councillors from committees or the acting mayor rotation and could potentially escalate to docking pay).
However, where things got — and could be — interesting was when it came to the question of who should be making these decisions. The way it generally works, Harding explained, is that complaints are given to the city manager, as the most senior employee of council. The manager, however, only has a minimal amount to do with the complaints, instead passing them along, as needed, to outside specialists who have moved into these sorts of investigations as part of their practice — generally lawyers like Harding, although he would not be eligible because his law firm is also a client of the city — it would have to be another lawyer at another firm without current ties to Prince George.
And that’s what Mayor Simon Yu had a problem with. He argued that in order for the process to be truly neutral, the person handling every aspect of this thing should be outside of city hall — including the handling of complaints, which under the proposed guidelines would be the city manager.
Here are Yu’s comments, somewhat edited for length and clarity, on why he strongly feels the city needs to have an outside party involved at all steps (you can watch at roughly the three hour and fourteen minute mark here):
“It’s a complaint procedure. Complaint means there’s some conflict. To resolve conflicts, an absolutely independent — the symbol of the lady with her eyes blindfolded — that’s what we’re talking about here.
“I always like to see city council here have an independent legal counsel … then, if there’s a complaint, we direct this to the city manager … that will save him the trouble of having to deal with this politically. Because this independent investigator, their independence has to be absolutely independent. This is how we’re going to protect democracy…
“We’ve had a lot of issues in the past, I think to some degree, because these things are not very clear…
…
“I have trouble with this [code of conduct] as I’m listening to this…
“We have to have an independent legal counsel for the council … and we have to have that in place to make the process independent, a true independent review.”
Coun. Trudy Klassen agreed, and asked if the job could go to someone else. Harding said it could technically go to anyone — the head of HR, the fire chief — but if the goal is to avoid having anyone employed by council involved, the only solution is the creation of a position of ethics commssioner.
What is an ethics commissioner?
You might not know because they aren’t very common. In B.C., only three cities have one — Vancouver, New Westminster and Surrey. Harding was actually the first ethics commissioner for Surrey, staring in 2020 and ending in July 2021. You can read his thoughts on how things went here, having been in the job during a particularly tumultuous time for a particularly tumultuous council.
Here’s the thing about an ethics commissioner that is different from literally every job at a city: They are completely independent. The city manager is an employee of mayor and council, and can be hired and fired by them. Every other position at the city is under the manager. Not so for an ethics commissioner — because of the nature of their work, the move by the very few city’s that have hired one has been to establish them as a neutral, independent office.
While all of that solves Yu’s desire to avoid any possible conflict of interest when it comes to disputes, it comes with a cost — literally, at more than $200,000 a year in Surrey and a similar price tag for the same job in Vancouver. Because of this, Harding advised very strongly against Prince George pursuing this model, instead encouraging them to stick with the more established, and cheaper mode that most other cities adopt and then checking in in a year or two to decide whether it’s working or not. If not, then they could go down the more expensive role.
Most of council was good with this. Cori Ramsay noted that the Union of B.C. Municipalities is looking into establishing a template for codes of conducts/ethics commissioners and said it would be worth waiting to see what they come up with prior to becoming one of just four cities in B.C. to create an ethics commission — especially since the others are far, far bigger municipalities with bigger budgets to burn (“democracy is expensive,” Yu responded).
In the end, the question was called and the code of conduct, as proposed was passed through first three readings with Yu and Klassen opposed (Skakun may have been for or against, I was unclear and the minutes haven’t been posted yet).
Quick news:
Speaking of things that cost the city money, here’s more on the possible tax increases coming in the new year.
GoFundMe named Prince George the fourth most generous city in Canada based on dollars donated to online campaigns.
The Coldsnap Music Festival is adding late-night performances to its roster this February.
A Prince George man found a 25-year-old bottle of homemade wine kicking around an old house he bought. Here’s his review (raisiny).
Despite having some of the leading scorers in the WHL, no Prince George Cougars have been named to Canada’s World Juniors.
Nearly 1000 self-storage lockers nearing completion in Prince George.
It’s a good thing Mr. PG isn’t still made of wood or he would almost certainly be destroyed by northern flickers.
Asking UNBC students — and one professor — if they have “rizz.”
I think I might finally be getting K-Pop, or else it’s just evolved toward 2000s-era sleze-pop music that I’m already predisposed to. Either way, here’s today’s song:
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Thanks for this excellent overview of the ethics commissioner discussion!