 | Thursday, April 29, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Metro Vancouver council meeting ends abruptly after 10-minute attack by one councillor on another | | |  | | | It seems every few months there’s a story of a city council with so much dysfunction that it becomes bigger than any particular policy vote, and often in Metro Vancouver, that council happens to be Port Moody.
Last Tuesday’s meeting ended abruptly after Coun. Hunter Madsen made a 10-minute speech that was mostly criticizing fellow councillor Zoe Royer and then denied giving unanimous consent to continue the meeting past its deadline.
The most serious of the charges was alleging a possible conflict of interest.
Madsen alleged that Royer tried to get the city to settle a lawsuit that involved a company that also does work with a business owned by Royer’s own family, and it appears he made public a discussion that has been private in council for some time— which itself could be considered an issue.
Some of the charges were more personal.
In a council debate two weeks earlier around density, Royer cited a book Madsen wrote 35 years ago about using different communication strategies to end LGBTQ bigotry, as an example of how he was well-versed in propaganda, an odd stretch at best that provoked heated criticism from Madsen.
Royer did not respond to a request for comment, but it was the sort of attack on another councillor’s motives that a majority on council has taken part in at some point in the last three years. It’s led to numerous letters to the local paper lamenting the city’s dysfunction and accusations of sexism from multiple women on council towards some of their male counterparts.
This month, council agreed to workshops with an outside group to try to improve communication.
There are a few things worth noting here.
One, local governments increasingly talk about how “code of conduct” can prevent a toxic culture from forming. But Port Moody created one in 2018 — the first in B.C.
Council collegiality ultimately depends less on a stone tablet of rules and more about a willingness to treat others with respect and find common ground.
Another is that despite Coun. Madsen ending his remarks by saying “we really do need to find a way forward that heals this broken body,” he (along with Mayor Rob Vagramov) contacted Metro Matters to alert us to this new conflict, which seems an odd way to move forward.
And the third is that both sides of this dispute — which on a policy level is mostly rooted in disagreements over density — believe they are absolutely in the right, that the other side has provoked every conflict and don’t understand why everybody doesn’t see it their way.
But consider Nanaimo, the last major B.C. city to have dysfunction be this large for so long.
Voters didn’t pick sides in the next election.
Instead, they organized a slate of new candidates, and voted the majority of incumbents running again out. | | |  | | | 1. Castlegar | Speaking of which, remember the mayor who quit after it was revealed he went to a vacation cabin over the holidays, blaming a dysfunctional council for added stress? One of the councillors that was part of the split on council, Florio Vassilakakis, ran to replace him in the byelection. But voters, instead, elected someone who had nothing to do with the original conflict, choosing former councillor Kirk Duff to be the new mayor. Funny how that works.
Read more | | | | |  | | | 2. Surrey | Continuing our theme of conflict, a Surrey council meeting ended with multiple councillors shouting and calling each other bad at their jobs, and multiple councillors apologizing to the media afterwards. As always in Surrey, the level of dysfunction in terms of policy movement is relatively minimal, though, because the Safe Surrey Coalition still maintains a consistent 5-4 vote on all issues.
Read more in the Peace Arch News | | | |  | | | 3. Vancouver | One week after hiring its new city manager, the city hired its new chief planner, again tapping the previous #2 for the #1 job. Meanwhile, progress continues on ending the Strathcona Park camp, and we crunched the numbers to show more than $250 million has been spent on properties (mostly hotels) in the last year, adding more than 700 beds to the city’s stock.
Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Pigeons | Eighteen months after it began, the District of North Vancouver’s great pigeon saga is over: a new bylaw was passed this week that tweaks the rules around owning them, a month after the last legal action around the city’s original vote to ban the birds was discontinued. A story about neighbours, birds and conflicts of interests has flown the coop.
Read more in the North Shore News | | | |  | | | 5. Pickleball | Two pickleball stories for the price of one! The question in both Oak Bay and Port Moody is the noise that emanates from the whacking of balls — a louder and more distinct pitch than tennis, claim nearby residents. We watch this eagerly expanding municipal issue as though it were whatever the pickleball equivalent of Wimbledon is.
Read more in the TriCity News | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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