Mayor Brain's endorsements largely irrelevant to your choices Saturday

The Mayor his hoping to keep the old gang together come
Saturday's general vote in the civic election

Mayor Lee Brain has weighed in on the final days of the City Council campaign, making use of his Social Media megaphone of Facebook on Tuesday, to endorse all four current incumbents at City Council, suggesting that keeping the team together will be of benefit to the community.

In his tribute to his co-workers on Council, the Mayor observes how they all work together to help him be a better Mayor, frequently it seems challenging him at City Hall, though  if so, they rarely do it in a public setting.

As we have noted previously on the blog, this past year has been one of some very short Public Council sessions, with the council membership for the most part quite restrained when it comes to any public discussion in the Council chamber.

Then again, in an era where the majority of council sessions took place within a range of twenty minutes to fifty minutes (some even less), there's really not much time to expand on things too much, let alone offer up any form of contrarian thinking to what few discussion topics get an airing.

Perhaps all that collective push back has come as part of the rather long list of closed council sessions hosted by Council this year, 13 of them as of October 9th.

Or by way of the many workshops that are held outside of the public record and public view.

Regardless, when it comes to the process of civic governance, less and less of it was done in a public session over the last four years.

Something that was an election theme four years ago, but now is an element of democracy that few of the City Council members have addressed while sitting around the chamber every couple of weeks.

The kind words from the Mayor have however provided for opportunity for the Council members to once again pay fealty to the mayor's guidance over these last four years, with some of the candidates re-posting the Mayor's endorsement to their Social media pages, on occasion some come with a right back at you declaration to the Mayor.

And while it's perhaps interesting to know who the Mayor would prefer to see sitting to his left and right after this Saturday, in this case his opinion is really quite irrelevant for the readers of his Facebook thoughts.

When it comes to you and the ballot you will fill out, the only consideration a voter should take to the ballot box on Saturday is which candidate will best represent their interests around the City Council table, not who the Mayor believes best fits into the team building concept.

Take some time to review the themes the candidates have outlined over the course of the campaign to determine which of the candidates may match up with your thoughts as to how the city should be governed for the next four years.

As well, for those that are inclined to review the past four years of council work, we have a pretty comprehensive archive of notes on Council discussion themes available here.

As it looks to this point, we're not sure that the Mayor will be all that disappointed with the roster of council members come 8 PM on Saturday, whoever makes it to the list of Six.

For the most part all of the new arrivals on the political scene have endorsed much of what the Mayor has outlined through his Hays 2.0 program, something that will no doubt quickly bring them to council as valued members of the team concept for the four years to come.

For more notes on the City Council election campaign see our archive pages below.


Prince Rupert, Port Edward, Haida Gwaii

Northwest Inland areas


Cross posted from the North Coast Review