The Revelstoke Chamber of Commerce hosted a Candidate’s Forum with the municipal election candidates for Revelstoke City Council and Mayor.
The ten council candidates and two candidates for mayor attended the event, starting with opening statements, answering seven questions that were based on questions submitted to the Chamber from the public, and finishing with a closing statement.
The first question was:
The City has had significant staff turnover in the last year and there have been concerns about communications from the City to residents and collaboration by the City with others.
Do you see these as problems for the City? If so, what would you do to address them as a member of Council?
Here are the candidates answers:
Darcy Wyonzek-Mayor
I am a newbie so I was not aware that there was a change in staff. So far I have seen them really working hard. Some of what I have seen coming out, especially with respect to marijuana, just even getting me set up so I can do my homework, everybody that I have encountered works really hard and I think they are motivated. So far as mayor goes I would be facilitating that. Whatever problems they might be having, whatever we can do to make that better. And yes communication, very important. Cell phones don’t always work, not for me. I will be available full time.
Gary Sulz-Mayor
Definitely there is a problem…and the problem is that when people leave the workload is transferred to other people. There might be new people coming in and they are not up to speed. Is there a problem with some of the people who have left? Some people have left in the last couple years due to family moving on to better things for them and that puts pressure on the other people that are there. It is a system within a system when we’re dealing with staff. To follow that what is going to be best. The best thing we can do its empower those who are there, build them up, strengthen them up, give them other resources for whatever we need to do. Communication all we can do is engage the community, engage the city staff.
Cody Younker-Council
If you followed me on my Facebook page, which you should, one of my big things that I have been saying is there is a problem at city hall. It has nothing to do with city staff, I don’t fault them for any of this but any successful business, that many of the people in this room run, or any business you hear about, if there is a high turnover at management, there is a problem with that business. And I believe that city hall needs to be run more like a business and the one that is getting run right now is clearly not doing well. We don’t have a city planner now, we go through building inspectors, we just hired a new economic development director. We shouldn’t be going through these positions, it is a strain on city hall as it is. And it doesn’ t help with the moral of city staff. One of the things that I would say if I was elected to city council that I would do it to sit down with all of the other council members and the mayor and to figure out what is going on and to bring in an outside consultation company and to try and find out what the problems are and truly talk to the staff.
Mike Brooks-Hill-Council
This is like three questions in one. Yes, staff turnover is a huge issue and it is a complicated issue. Communications, from the city to residents, I find has been very inconsistent. The public hearings for some issues have happened, in public consultation with the marijuana bylaw was passed without any issues because there was proper consultations done. DCCs were rushed through without consultations and it was a disaster. I think communications but also consistency in this level of communication is important. And collaboration. So the staff turnover, part of the problem, is also, as I was saying today, hiring staff is also a challenge because there is a lack of accommodation. So it all comes back to housing, planning, OCP, thank you.
Tim Palmer-Council
I agree it’s three questions. On the staff. Yeah there has been a turnover at city hall. We have a lot of stability in public works, recreation, there is a lot of stability, we have lots really good employees. We don’t hear squat, things have been running really well. City hall has a few more employees than they had before. I’d rather see a little bit of leadership and finding solutions. 33 seconds. Communications, yeah we have a lot of work to do on communications. That starts at this table with the council, making sure they’re communicating with the public, communicating with staff but more importantly that we are listening. There is a lot more opportunity to be listening to residents. There is a number of mechanisms there. Thank you.
Robert Elliott-Council
Any time you lose staff… recovering from that is a crisis. Running a business, it takes a lot of time to come back from. We have lost some very very crucial members of our city administration team. We can’t keep doing that. We have to change. Something is wrong, we have to fix it. We just can’t keep running through people. That’s wrong. Communication is a big part of it. A bigger part is that we have to have an identity, a plan, a big objective that rallies everybody behind it. That’s the missing element. We have all this tension, this uncertainty, this misdirection that’s going on because we don’t know where we are going. And I think that is the first step. That could rally everybody behind it. The staff, the council, the community behind it if we are all supporting this one direction forward.
Steven Cross-Council
This is a common problem in just about every organization in the world. Teams are complicated. There is an old saying that two people is x complications, three people is x squared, four people is x cubed. My view on this is that we have a really hard working city hall. Trust may be damaged in some places there and that is part a. Part b is that as council members we work from a governance perspective, it would be wrong of us to micro-manage city hall, that is not the way good governance works. None the less governance is about setting standards so I would like to talk to city hall and my fellow councillors if elected about what do we need to do to win there on the communities voice processes, what is the hiring practices, what is the leadership area, where do they want to go. And after that put good governance in on that process and over time I believe we will get a better team going.
Steven Kent-Council
We could do a lot better at communicating with the public what city hall is doing. I think the DCC process is a good example of how poorly we can do it. We have a community that is ready to be engaged. There is a lot of people here right now, every public meeting that I have been to has had a lot of people show up at it. Everybody cares and we just have to make sure we are listening. The problem with city hall going through people is huge and I have no idea why that is the case. I asked Mark that question, he didn’t know either. But I do know that there has been an offer to do an external audit of the city hall, I think the Chamber of Commerce came up with that, I think we should jump on that, we should accept that offer and definitely do that.
Nicole Cherlet-Council
I mentioned before I come from restaurants and hospitality, that is my background. You want to see high turnover, work at a seasonal restaurant. But then there is other restaurants that seem to have the same crew year after year after year and what I have seen, the commonalities in those, is when you give staff the tools they need to do their job and you recognize them for a job well done while offering some caring, compassion and support to help them improve the spots that they are struggling, that’s what builds a strong team. But we are right we are not the managers of these teams, we are in governance at city council. I’ve put a big post about governance and the things that I have been learning in the last year on my website. If you Google Nicole Cherlet you will see my details on that. I have also gone into what it means to truly collaborate with our community and consult in a way that is brave, that we have the guts to listen to the answers and to implement them into smart policy moving forward.
Tony Morabito-Council
I am concerned about the staff turnover and I think there is some misinformation that probably tends to come from the public and residents and pressure from the business sector. I would like to meet with the CAO and deal with any issues that are outstanding. Thank you.
Jackie Rhind-Council
I think there are two parts to this problem. The first is that it is a bit of a systemic issue in that we have some outdated planning documents and that makes it really difficult for the city to do their job effectively. I don’t think anybody wants to be putting out permits slowly or wasting their time going back and forth with developers. I think that is one part of the issue, so updating those documents would be a great step. The second is the work load. Obviously we have a lot more permits going out the door than we had before and so it might be worth doing some kind of internal assessment just to see where those bottlenecks are and to alleviate some of the pressure at those pressure points.
Peter Humphreys-Council
I’m not sure if I am allowed to say this but madame moderator I am sure you will correct me if I’m not. To make sure you are all paying attention there’s going to be a test at the end of this. And I think I can give out a few of the answers. One of them is what is Cody’s middle name and the other question is going to be what does the C stand for in my F-A-C-T. C stands for communicate, communicate, communicate. So that is exactly what I am going to do and on this issue as well.
The answers to the rest of the questions will be published in upcoming days. Go to revelstokereview.com/municipal-election for more election coverage.