McNeil-Smith keeps job as Sidney mayor

Sidney voters need not worry about trekking to the polls for a byelection. A B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled Thursday that Mayor Cliff McNeil-Smith can keep the job despite overspending during October’s municipal election campaign.

Some updates to earlier stories as you search for your snow shovel:

Cliff McNeil-Smith won’t lose his job as mayor of Sidney — but he is poorer and wiser.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled Thursday that although McNeil-Smith overspent during October’s municipal election campaign, it was “inconceivable” that the error affected the outcome of his landslide victory.

The new mayor still had to foot the bill for going to court to keep his job, though. (The law governing local elections says candidates who violate spending rules lose their seats automatically unless granted relief from the courts.)

That’s on top of the $3,755.26 he paid Elections B.C. — a fine of twice the amount overspent is the standard penalty for such breaches. It all comes out of his own pocket.

McNeil-Smith, who took about 80 per cent of the vote in defeating incumbent Steve Price, said he approached Elections B.C. after tallying up his campaign expenses and realizing they were $1,877.63 over the $11,349 limit.

“We contacted Elections B.C. before the filing date,” he said. For those keeping score at home, here’s how much marijuana Ted Smith has been obliged to hand out: None.

In October, I reported that Smith could be on the hook for up to $12,000 worth of pot, payable to those who had helped fund his legal battles 15 years earlier.

Back in 2003, the Victoria marijuana crusader devised a novel way to fund his Cannabis Buyers Club’s various court fights: He offered what he called Cannabonds — $25 certificates redeemable for a quarter-ounce of high-grade pot within three months of the drug becoming legal in Canada.

Since legalization arrived Oct. 17, that meant the $5,000 worth of Cannabonds he sold could be redeemed as of Jan. 17.

With a top-quality quarterounce selling for $60, that meant $12,000 if everyone cashed in.

So far, only one person has announced her intention to do so, mailing her Cannabond from Kamloops.

Even then, Smith won’t have to pay up personally. One of the club’s staff is so keen to get her hands on a Cannabond as a souvenir that she has offered to send the woman her weed in exchange for the paper.

Some of Smith’s friends have told him they, too, wanted to redeem their Cannabonds but, um, couldn’t find them. The green-bike people are feeling blue — but not that blue.

Of the 200 lime-green rental bikes that China-based U-Bicycle scattered through downtown Victoria over the past couple of years, only 110 remain on the road.

Some of those are in Richmond for repair, but others have fallen prey to thieves and vandals, been broken up like a bad relationship or chucked in the chuck.

To which U-Bicycle’s Victoria manager, Trisha Cacchione, says: “I think it could be significantly worse.”

Really, those 90 casualties are only 10 per cent of the 900 bikes U-Bicycle has spread around Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt and Cowichan Bay since arriving here with much fanfare following a City of Victoria trade trip to China in 2016; there have been losses elsewhere, but not on the scale seen downtown. U-Bicycle’s business model — renters use a smartphone app to unlock readily accessible GPS-enabled bikes left in the open — make the twowheelers vulnerable to abuse.

The phenomenon is not limited to Victoria. Cacchione mentioned bikes belonging to a similar business being piled up and set on fire in California. Vandalism has forced other companies out of cities such as Zurich, Switzerland and Manchester, England.

Cacchione remains positive, though, attributing the Victoria losses to “growing pains.” Gerry Furney, the long-serving Port McNeill mayor who died this week, was as famous for his mischievous sense of humour as for his 46 years on council.

In the 1980s, after Vancouver’s new SkyTrain took to naming particular cars after B.C. communities, Furney suggested north Island municipalities promote one another by doing something similar.

In a letter to Campbell River council, he proposed that municipality paint “Spirit of Port McNeill” on one of its buses. No hard feelings if you don’t want to play along, he wrote, we’ll apply “Spirit of Campbell River” to a Port McNeill vehicle in any event. If you do as we agree, that vehicle will be the mayor’s truck. If not, it will be the municipal sewage-pumper.