Three booted from regional board
Kelowna city councillors who opposed a 35 per cent pay raise have lost their positions on the Central Okanagan Regional District board.
Ron Cannan, Gord Lovegrove, and Mohini Singh were removed Thursday as city appointees to the board, a position which paid them $17,000 a year in addition to their council salaries.
“I was surprised,” Singh said Friday. Cannan declined Friday to comment on his removal from the board but said he would likely address the matter at Monday’s meeting.
Lovegrove responded via text: “No comment at this time.”
The three expressed their opposition in March and April to a plan to raise city councillor salaries from $43,000 to $58,000.
They thought it was excessive and indicated they knew what the salary was when they ran in the 2022 election.
Singh did not respond directly Friday when asked if she believed their removal from the regional board had anything to do with their opposition to the council pay hikes. But she made it clear she wanted to remain on the 12-member regional board.
“I was an active member of the board, served the region and protected the interests of our city,” she said. “Unfortunately, I have to step down.”
In a statement, Mayor Tom Dyas said he wanted other councillors to gain experience on the regional board.
“Our role as council demands a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of governance, budgets, bylaws, and the operations of the regional district and neighbouring communities. Rotating through different committees enables us to achieve this goal effectively,” Dyas said.
The decision to remove Cannan, Lovegrove and Singh came at the end of a long council meeting on April 29 that began at 9:09 a.m. and ended at 4:25 p.m.
At the last item on the agenda, Mayor Tom Dyas made reference to a long list of new or continuing councillor appointments to 17 committees, including the biosolids advisory committee and a task force on performing arts. Then Dyas indicated he wanted to revoke the appointments of Cannan, Lovegrove and Singh to the regional board.
As mayor, Dyas can make committee appointments directly, but he does not have authority on his own to make the six regional appointments. That decision must be voted on by council.
On April 29, the vote was 6-2 in favour of replacing Cannan, Lovegrove, and Singh. Cannan and Lovegrove voted against; Singh was absent for that part of the meeting.
The new appointees are Luke Stack, Maxine DeHart and Rick Webber. They join Dyas, Loyal Wooldridge and Charlie Hodge. Singh remains an alternate, meaning she only attends a meeting and is paid $90 if someone is absent.
In an interview Friday, Hodge said Dyas read out the names of the councillors he wanted to appoint to the board, then quickly called for a vote before there was a chance for any discussion.
“He pretty much called the vote right away. It was bing, bang, boom . . .it was all slammed through,” Hodge said. “It happened so quick to be honest with you that I didn’t realize three were coming off (the regional board) and three were coming on.”
As with any council vote, those who don’t formally register their opposition are considered to be in favour.
“Why didn’t I raise my hand? I guess you could say I screwed up,” Hodge said. “In hindsight, I should have voted different. I made a mistake in the fact we should have had a debate about it. It should have been discussed.
“But it all happened so quick,” he said. “I regret the fact there wasn’t a discussion about it, or a rationale to it. The more I look at it, the more I don’t understand it.
“I don’t understand why the mayor wanted to make the changes he did. It didn’t make sense to me,” Hodge said. “The way it looks, I suppose, is that those three are off the board because they voted against the (council) raise. I don’t know if that’s what the mayor’s thinking was or not but it had nothing to do with my vote. . . God no, not at all.”
“We didn’t have the time or conversation to think about it, to be honest with you,” he said. “The situation here wasn’t handled well.”
“Maybe the reality of what was really happening didn’t hit me, but I think you could say that about most of the people in the room,” Hodge said. “We were all burnt out and tired at that point in the day.
“After the fact, Ron yelled out to the mayor that he wasn’t happy,” Hodge said.
In his statement, Dyas said: “These changes (to the regional board) aim to strengthen our council’s capacity to serve our constituents and uphold our commitment to transparency, accountability, and effective governance.”
Councillors Stack, DeHart, Webber, and Wooldridge did not respond Friday to requests for comment.
Former mayor Walter Gray, who was in office for a total of 12 years, said he couldn’t recall ever replacing council appointees to the regional board outside of the appointments that were made after elections.
“I don’t recall that ever happening,”
Gray said.
Former mayor Sharon Shepherd, in office from 2005 to 2011, also said the shuffle among the city’s regional appointees was unusual: “Unless someone has decided they cannot attend meetings, that they are ill, or for whatever reason they don’t want to be on the board anymore, I’ve never heard of someone being replaced,” she told Global Okanagan.