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| Mayor Lee Brain introduced the creation of a Blue Ribbon Select Standing Committee on remuneration on Monday night, but so far the only details about it are available through his Facebook page |
The launch of what Prince Rupert Mayor Lee Brain calls a Blue Ribbon Select Standing Committee on Remuneration was a last minute addition to the agenda for last week's City Council meeting agenda, one that was seemingly not added to the council to do list until the opening remarks of the night.
The Committee announcement and its prospect for potential community engagement was something that we took note of last week with this review.
The synopsis of the initiative, that of the plan to review the impact of a change in Federal Tax legislation, as well as other elements of compensation for municipal officials.
The Mayor's roll out of the project can be viewed from the city's Video Archive from Monday's council session, starting at the 11minute mark.
Mr. Brain has also followed up on Monday's announcement with some further background for those who follow him on his political Facebook page, posting his heads up notes on Tuesday the 23rd, including the invitation for those with an interest in serving on the panel to contact him personally at City Hall.
So, far however, just short of one week after the project was introduced to Council, that Facebook advisory has made for the only call for applications, with the city's website and other social media options left out of the program launch and with little more known about what the scope of the project will be.
And that's a bit of a problem when it comes to the optics for what is supposed to be a transparent and accountable process, for the nature of the Mayor's Facebook page appears at times to be somewhat of a partisan portal.
A place where the number of his supporters that can be found supporting his notes on his social media page making for a very vocal group.
While residents who may question some of his initiatives, or have concerns on civic issues, would seem to be decidedly in the minority there.
Now there is nothing wrong with using that social media vehicle to relay the initiative, it is a tool for information delivery and the Mayor has used it well.
But City Council members should remember that there is a segment of the population that doesn't particularly like social media, or believe that civic engagement projects such as the pay review committee, should have some semblance of distance from the personal nature of the mayor's online forum commentary.
There are a number of other options for the City to spread the word of this Blue Ribbon Committee, though they don't seem to get quite as much use, or near as many updates, as the Mayors Facebook page does:
City of Prince Rupert Website
City of Prince Rupert Facebook page
City of Prince Rupert twitter feed
City of Prince Rupert YouTube page
City of Prince Rupert Mobile Application
Without further advisories through that growing list of non-political civic information sites that the city has available to it, the prospect of a Committee Panel make up that is potentially in lock step with how the Mayor and Council have addressed issues over the last four years could raise concerns over objectivity.
Without a wider engagement in attracting participants, whatever balance that would be needed for a fair and independent overview of the salary issues as outlined by the Mayor last Monday could become clouded, if not questioned.
For a truly representative panel of the whole community, the call for would be participants should cast as wide a net as possible, and not just those residents who are dedicated in the constant monitoring of one social media page.
Hopefully, more information on the nature of this salary review panel will be explained to residents prior to the selection of the Blue Ribbon panel, providing us with some guidance as to the Terms of Reference, the scope of the review that the panel will take on and how any final decisions will be reached.
For more items of note related to City Council Discussion themes see our archive page here.
Cross posted from the North Coast Review
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