 | Friday, June 25, 2021
Reading this online? Sign up to get this delivered to your inbox every Friday. | | Penticton elects the managing editor of the local newspaper to city hall — and inevitable questions arise | | |  | | | It’s rare for byelection results in a mid-sized city to get coverage from multiple publications for several days in a row.
But people running the town newspaper don’t often become city councillors.
“I believe I can balance it,” said James Miller, managing editor of the Penticton Herald, after handily winning a spot on Penticton city council in a byelection last weekend.
Miller, a longtime B.C. journalist, has decided to stay on as editor until next October’s election, when he’ll make a longer-term decision about his career in both journalism and politics.
He’s promised to remove himself from all reporting and editorial decisions on council matters in the meantime.
If you raised your eyebrows, you aren’t alone — a number of journalists in the province questioned whether such a separation was ethically possible, given all the ways that municipal politics interact with local news.
“I don’t think everything deals with city council directly,” said Miller when interviewed this week by CBC News. “Housing ... yes, but how [does] kids raising money for a worthwhile cause tie in with council?”
It’s a fair argument from Miller. It’s also worth mentioning he’s not the only person in B.C. in this position: the mayor of Ashcroft edits the local newspaper, and the pipeline between journalism and local politics has a long history.
However, it’s been a long time since a practising journalist was elected to office in a municipality as large as Penticton. With around 35,000 people, it’s the sixth largest municipality in B.C. outside the Vancouver or Victoria area.
And it’s not as though the political temperature is low in town at the moment — the decision by the province to keep open a homeless shelter over the objections of city hall has sparked a huge intergovernmental conflict that may only be resolved in court.
It means that even if everything goes as well as possible for Miller, he’ll face plenty of skepticism over the next 15 months.
And if it doesn’t? One imagines Miller will face all sorts of criticism and second guessing.
Which is par for the course for any newspaper editor — though the stakes are raised when you enter city hall. | | |  | | | 1. Penticton | Credit to Miller for taking questions from us and other publications over the past week. One of his defences for the decision was that the salary of a Penction councillor (just under $28,000 in 2020) wasn’t enough for him to quit his day job — another wrinkle in the continuing debate on whether local officials should be paid enough to allow more people to seek the position free of other commitments or conflicts.
Read more | | | | |  | | | 2. Burnaby | And speaking of byelections! B.C.’s third largest city has a big one this Saturday, finally filling two councillor positions that were vacated a year ago. There are 14 candidates running, with a big question being whether the long-dominant Burnaby Citizens Association can keep winning following the 2018 defeat of Derek Corrigan.
Read more in the Burnaby Now | | | |  | | | 3. Port Alberni | It can be tough for a city to transition its waterfront away from historic, natural resource industrial use, but Port Alberni has taken a big step to try to do so by serving formal notice of expropriation to Western Forest Products Inc. for 43 acres. Whether WFP will work for a settlement, take legal action or try to restart activity at its sawmill is TBD. Read more | | | | | |  | | | 4. Vancouver | | | Council spent several days getting through a backlog of delayed motions, including work on emissions-free landscaping equipment and updates on the Jericho Lands. Meanwhile, residents continue to wait, 30 months after the process began, for legal park drinking — though judging by the scene at certain parks, maybe they aren’t.
Read more | |  | | | 5. Canada Day | Some are cancelling their events outright, some are pivoting them to focus on reconciliation, while others are going ahead as planned. But in a year where budgets and planning were minimal due to the pandemic, the conversation around longer-term plans for municipal Canada Day celebrations will be worth watching for a while yet.
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