MLA Michelle Stilwell Not OUR Representative!!

   As many of you will remember, British Columbia held a provincial election last May. The BC Liberals 'pulling it out of the fire' was quite a surprise to most people but the pragmatic amongst us believed that the public must see something in the Liberals that would make them better representatives for us. After all, isn't that the basis of the democratic system, the one that millions have given their lives to defend over the years.
   Sadly, I am here to tell you that our rookie MLA, Michelle Stilwell, is failing at the very heart of this concept. I don't remember exactly where it started to go wrong but we haven't had a representative government for a very long time. Instead of taking our viewpoint to Victoria and voting for their constituents, MLAs now accept our salarys, spend our expenses to get to and stay in Victoria and then they vote the way their party tells them to. Then they again spend our expenses returning to their riding to tell us how this is all going to be. What the hell kind of democracy is that?!?
    I thought that I would 'get ahead of the curve' by contacting Ms. Stilwell via Twitter during the election campaign to have her explain to me, and the rest of the 'Twitterverse', what her approach was going to be if she was fortunate enough to be graced with/garner the majority of our votes.
  After only meeting at the Legislature for 36 days in the past year and half, the government set themselves an ambitious calendar for the spring session. One issue that I had personally spent a lot of time on over the past 4 years was that of local government elections' rule reform. After Ms. Stilwell was elected, I resolved that I would make this a test of her commitment to democracy. To that end, I had sent her the following email (14 05 08) referencing 'unanswered' pre-election Tweets to let her know exactly how and why one of her constituents felt:

 Dear Ms. Stilwell,

May 3/13 Tweet to @stilwell2013:
Wut specific experience do u have that makes u my best choice for MLA?

May 7/13 Tweet to @stilwell2013:
U didn't respond 2 prev tweet-so, given there r basicaly 0 free votes in legis, how exactly would u be my "champion"?!

May 10/13 Tweet to @stilwell2013:
Since u don't answr tweets when u need my vote, wonder wut u be like if u were my MLA and I neded ur help?!?

As it has now been 7 weeks since I sent you additional facts on the term-of-office extension for local politicians issue, I am disappointed (but sadly not surprised) that you have chosen not to continue the discussion.

So, this is how that precious and fragile thing called democracy (the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life / the key to democracy is the right to state your opinion, and to have it heard – to place your ideas in the public discourse, for review, discussion, and development / "government by the people"), a concept that hundreds of our fathers/mothers and sons/daughters and tens of thousands of our grandfathers have given their lives for, is supposed to work! The people you promised to represent to the best of your ability present a concern to you as his/her MLA. You look into it, gathering your own set of information and then you enter into a frank and open discussion with the constituent. Through this reasoned process, you jointly arrive at an agreed upon set of facts. This process may well be going on in parallel with a number of constituents, representing various viewpoints on this issue. After careful consideration, you then arrive at a position as to how you are going to vote when the actual legislation is brought forward. It appears that we are stuck at the very beginning in as much as you have chosen not to engage in a discussion of the relevant information. This is very disappointing but, unfortunately, not surprising, given your lack of engagement when I sent out the Tweets during the election campaign asking you to explain your approach to the current take on democracy.
   Now, back to the current issue. You have provided nothing to counter the information regarding support (or lack thereof) for increasing local government politicians' terms-of-office from 3 to 4 years which I have researched and provided to you so it appears that you are prepared to vote for this legislation despite the obvious lack of broad support put forward by the government and that the most important element in the democratic system, the public, has not been mentioned at all. Other deficiencies: taking into account only the support of a group which is clearly in a conflict of interest and direct disregard and contravention of the public's majority voice.
   It is deeply troubling to me that, as my representative in the government, you would take such a cavalier approach to such an important issue.

Sincerely,
Hans J. Larsen
Lantzville, B. C.

I live in Lantzville, BC, CANADA and this keeps me busy!!

Of course, even though she continues to cash yours and my paycheque and have us pay for her to attend the Legislature and provide her with a 'Constituency' Office and staff, I received no reply from her! And the Liberal government, in spite of the overwhelming public input favouring the 'status quo', made the change from 3-year to 4-year terms for local government officials. Also, in spite of overwhelming public support for implementing campaign finance limits, the Liberal government chose to 'stand pat'.

Here is a link to a Times-Colonist newspaper Opinion piece by the Executive Director of IntegrityBC in which he criticizes the Liberal government's record on public consultation, i.e., asking the public for their opinion and then listening to the majority. Of course, if you don't ask your constituents for their opinion, you won't know what they want you to do when you get to Victoria!


http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/dermod-travis-liberals-stint-on-public-consultation-1.1119064

How would you rate our very own Parksville-Qualicum MLA on the six principles put forward by the former B.C. Auditor-General?

Have you been 'lucky' enough to receive regular mail-outs (email or otherwise) from Ms. Stilwell? In response to one this summer that was just pure government propaganda, I sent her the following email (14 10 17): 

Michelle,

   If you were actually prepared to participate in discussions and listen to what your constituents had to say on specific issues and to then back that up with your vote in Victoria, I might be interested in receiving unsolicited communications from you/your office. However, absent the ability to influence/moderate your actions on my behalf, I do not see any value in receiving propaganda (telling me how it's going to be) from your government. Therefore, please remove me from your mailing list.

Sincerely,

Hans J. Larsen

Lantzville, B.C.


I should point out that I referred to it as "your ('her') government" since that is the way she refers to it in her missives. Clearly, she doesn't realize that it is actually 'our' government and she is simply our representative in it.

Lantzville Council Size 2014 Referendum

As a result of calls from the Editor of the 'new' Lantzville Log (who we now know to have been former Mayor, Colin Haime) for residents to weigh in on the question of the size of Lantzville Council (currently a Mayor and 6 councillors), I submitted the following:

   Having spent a fair bit of time researching and thinking about this issue, I support reducing our council to 5 members. Let me share with you why.
   On the aspect of representation, it is the quality of the members, not the number that is important - more bodies does not necessarily mean better representation! On the aspect of quorum, 57 5-member B.C. municipalities are still able to function. On the issue of fostering diversity of opinion, I note the previous Council had 3 accountants, two of whom who were co-habiting!
   Population alone is a very poor indicator of government workload. Other factors such as the no. of permanent employees, the amount of annual expenses and the length of pipes+roads also should be considered. The Town of Qualicum Beach (6.5 x our # perm. employees, 4.5 x our expenses, 2 x the km. of pipes+roads, 2.5 x our population) has had 5 members for the past 71 years, and have provided capable oversight.
   Lantzville spent $927,000 on Administration in 2012, on total expenses of 2.6 M$ - 2 councillors plus expenses costs $24,000/yr at current levels. We need to look at all ways to save money and council should not be immune to that.
     Back in 2011, former councillor Negrave introduced a motion to have a referendum to reduce council size - it failed due to lack of a seconder - in other words, no one on that Council wanted to even discuss the pros and cons. Why would council, who works for and is paid by the taxpayers, not want to give the residents the opportunity to determine the size of that council? We didn't have a say on the original council size so it is entirely appropriate that we have our say now 10+ years on. And if it should increase voter turnout, how is that bad?!
   Send all council members an email sharing your opinion in this election year.

Interestingly, they published the piece, as submitted, except for the second sentence in the first paragraph and the last sentence in the entire piece?!
[UPDATE 14 11 18] We now know that, according to the preliminary results, the residents of Lantzville have voted 59% in favour of reducing our council size from 7 to 5. Even though returning councillor David Scott recently tried to use the very same Qualicum Beach as a reason to reject reducing our council size, the residents of that community actually voted 70% in favour of keeping their council size at the same level (5) that they have had for the past 71 years. Part of his argument was that Qualicum Beach had been paying their 4 councillors as if they were doing the work of six (I would assume based on some impression of time commitment) so that Lantzville wouldn't save any money by reducing our council size but, as one can clearly see from the above information, we don't have nearly the same workload as them so there is no reason to expect that we would have to similarly increase the pay of our 4 councillors. I think both communities got it right!

Lantzville Administration - Too 'Big and Rich' For Its Residents?!?

TO BEGIN, A QUESTION?
Why does Mayor Haime present the 5-Year Financial Plan and not the Director of FINANCial Services or the Deputy Director of FINANCial Services, both highly paid individuals who could probably use the practice of speaking to and interacting with the Public?

The saga of Council remuneration has been long and tortuous, including several 'fits and starts'. I understand that setting your own salary, especially in the public realm, is not an easy undertaking and that is why I have always supported using a logical, well-defined, fact-based process.

There were at least 3 remuneration committees in Lantzville during the past 18 years or so who took on the task of considering the workload of the Improvement District Trustees and making recommendations to them on what they should be paid and have reimbursed as expenses. Since, I, myself, was Chair of one of those committees, I know that some effort went into determining exactly what the Trustees did, how much time their duties took and what that was worth to the community. So, now we have progressed? to where the Councillors themselves will determine what they should be paid. They will sometimes arrange it so that any changes won't apply to them, only the next council, but I would ask you to take a guess at how many of them will be running in the next municipal election in order to 'see their agenda fulfilled'.

Now for the story so far - District of Lantzville council, after initially 'taking charge' and resolving, at their Regular Meeting on Mar. 12/07, to strike a 'Task Force' of residents to review current Mayor and Councillor remuneration and reimbursements and then make recommendations to Council, then rescinded that motion at their May 28th Regular Meeting. The reason given for this about-turn was that staff were having difficulty selecting community members to serve on said 'Task Force' and staff felt that Lantzville residents may not possess the specialized knowledge/experience required to perform the job. Some in our community have suggested that the real reason behind this 'change of horses' is that some members of Council were worried that a Citizen's Committee would actually end up recommending a pay CUT!

So, there you have it! Based on a recommendation from staff, the sole basis for deciding what our local politicians are to be paid is what other politicians in municipalities with 'similar' populations are being paid. While the increases then under consideration, 36% for the Mayor and 26% for each Councillor (followed by 'cost-of-living'), which were to be given second and third reading at the Nov. 12th Regular Council Meeting, are based entirely on the average remuneration for municipalities in the 2600-5000 population range ($17,656 for the Mayor, $8,969 for the Councillors), the actual range of 'indemnities' goes from $8000 for the 2762-peopled Village of Cumberland to $35,626 for the 4963-peopled Town of Osoyoos. This, by itself, should convince any thinking person that population averages alone don't nearly tell the whole story. All of the others below this amount on the list could argue that they too deserve a raise up to the 'average'. As I wrote in the initial installment of this piece, every time averages are used to determine a pay raise, the average increases and then everyone else thinks they're due for a raise, as well, and round and round it goes, driving up the cost to the taxpayers. A committee should have been struck, perhaps by random selection from the tax roles, and they should have developed 'metrics' for the position of Mayor and Councillor (meetings attended, emails/phone calls handled, files handled, issues resolved, etc.) and that should have been used as a basis for recommending the remuneration package. There also needs to be some recognition of the possibility that some of our representatives might be tempted to take advantage of the system and actually do very little.

Staff also cited as further justification for these increases the demands "of establishing Lantzville as a new municipality". Surely, even if these increases had been implemented then (a full 4 years after Lantzville's incorporation), it would be hard to convince anyone that much work relating to this item remained to be done. At the November meeting, the motion to accept the staff recommendation failed on a tie vote (with Mayor Haime, Councillors Haime and Parkhurst voting 'in favour').

From the above discussion, I think you can see that Council originally balked over concern at the 'optics' of giving themselves increases of 36% for the Mayor and 26% for Councillors but came back 'strong' a couple of years later (Feb. 22/10) and gave the Mayor 44% and the rest of Council 37% over 3 years, presumably to make up for the 'paltry' cost-of-living raises they had received in the meantime! During the discussion over these raises, the Chartered Accountant-laden Council made the comment that "the increase goes over 3 years so it is less than a 2% increase since we incorporated in 2003". While I am no accountant, I do operate a pretty mean calculator and I get the increase to be 4% per year for the Mayor up to 2010 and 3.6% per year for Councillors, also up to 2010. If we project that to when the raises will have taken full effect, it becomes 5.8% per year for the Mayor and 5.3% per year for Councillors, quite a discrepancy from 2%!

So here, after much work and many hours of effort in order to find, understand, authenticate and format, is a spreadsheet summarizing Council and senior staff remuneration and expenses since Lantzville's incorporation as a municipality in 2003, where those numbers are available (you can scroll 'up' and 'down', 'left' and 'right' in order to view the entire table:


Although it is indicated on the spreadsheet, it is important enough to be worth repeating that fully one third of Council salaries are tax-free, giving them an approximate 15-25% 'boost' on that amount. Also, money that Council spends on convention/conference attendance is, for some reason, not included with their expenses. This amounted to an additional $17,469 in 2009 and $12,577 in 2010.
It is also worth repeating that, Councillor Negrave tried to give back his raise in 2010 but others on Council expressed concern about how this would look so he seems to have agreed to now take the full salary. Whether or not he then donates the annual salary 'bump' to a worthy charity or cause, I don't know.

I have also tried to sort out the 'benefits' associated specifically with the salaries of Council and senior staff in the above table but, with the limited information available to the public, it is just not possible. What I can tell you, based on information in Schedule C fromo the District's annual Financial Statements, is that the total 'wages, salaries and benefits' cost in 2010 was $820,016 ($772,718 in 2009) and the total cost for 'training, travel and conferences' for 2010 was $56,970 ($57,180 in 2009). If we add these 2 numbers together, we get $876,986 for 2010 ($829,898 in 2009), which represents the total District Council and staff costs, except for 'Consulting' costs (assumed to be for Pam Shaw, Graham Savage, etc.), which were $16,212 in 2010 ($50,595 in 2009). It is not clear where Council and staff 'expenses' are accounted for 'Other'?).

Unless you've been living under a rock, most people living in the Nanaimo area now know that Gerry Berry, until fairly recently the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the City of Nanaimo was, in 2007, the 11th highest paid local government official in the province (in absolute terms) at $219,017/yr. The 'odour' of him 'retiring' two years later and collecting an almost half million dollar 'severance' package is a whole other topic of discussion! Since Nanaimo had a population of ~81,500 people at the time, this works out to be approx. $2.70 per resident/yr. (~$7.80 per household/yr.).

After receiving a steady series of increases, culminating in a 6.5% raise from $115,694 in 2009 to $123,216.57 in 2010 and, with an estimated population of only 3750 residents, Twyla Graff, the CAO of the District of Lantzville, is now being compensated to the tune of $32.90 per resident/yr. (~$92.00 per household/yr.). As well, the administrative budget alone of the then Lantzville Improvement District, now the District of Lantzville has increased from $193,167 to $819,116 since incorporation in 2003. Can anybody think of a really good reason why this should be or have any thoughts on what appears to be a very generous pay package for the 'Captain' of the 'good ship Lantzville'. If so, please let me know at vigilantz@hotmail.com!

I had hoped to be able to provide you with comparisons to our senior staff salaries for communities 'similar' to Lantzville but, after trying repeatedly for more than 3 weeks to have Jedha Holmes, Deputy Director of Financial Services devote a little time to helping me obtain that publicly mandated information through civicinfo.bc.ca, I am down the time it took to compose and reply to the several emails involved but I am certainly no further ahead. It is a matter of the District office investing about 10 minutes to help a resident of Lantzville obtain information which is legislated to be out in the public realm or me spending many hours navigating through 22 different community's websites looking for that information. I still plan on publishing those comparisons as soon as time to gather them permits so be sure to check back here every now and then.