Attention class, today we examine the political science treatise of Mayor Herb Pond, who uses his weekly pulpit of the Northern View, to provide a primer on politics today as conducted in the municipal theatre.
The Mayor in his weekly column explained how the provincial government had recently patted our town’s politicians on the back for their deft handling of the financial crisis of the last few years. The mayor coined the phrase “The Prince Rupert way” as a form of definition for solid municipal governance in times of trouble.
The Mayor recounted how the Premier of the province had expressed how impressed he was with the leadership exhibited by Prince Rupert council in these troubled times. From those seeds of respect, the Mayor has cobbled together a policy manual of sorts on how to govern, by forging a number of alliances that should in a perfect world benefit the good of the whole.
In the body of his column for the free local weekly paper, he points out how the city didn’t whine when thing went south financially, instead, we are to gather that when the going got tough, the tough got going.
He touched on the local economic development agency which was partnered with Port Edward and has made strides to insert the image of Prince Rupert/Port Edward into the bureaucracies of Victoria and Ottawa. Which we guess is a good thing, but it’s one that hasn’t really translated into any massive insertion of jobs to the local community yet.
Considering that both the two main projects currently on the go, the Container Port and the Gambling Mecca, were most likely going to go ahead with our without the city’s bureaucratic pursuits, we wonder if perhaps a bit more attention to the private sector might not benefit the overall economic climate for the city. Not all jobs are going to come from coffee chats with a cadre of government officials after all, attracting some solid industrial development might go a long way in solidifying our tenuous economic base.
Bureaucracy however was a continual theme of the Mayors column; he suggests that the future will require much more intensive lobbying of out of town politicians and bureaucrats, which he suggests will mean more travel to those centers of power. The quote from his submission “We must travel to the decision-makers more frequently”, we gather means an increase in the travel budget for a mayor, his council and our municipal bureaucrats.
It too is a concept that seems to have often been part of “the Prince Rupert way” as well!
He also tackled the issue of how government decisions are made, pointing out that today many decisions in Ottawa or Victoria are conducted behind the closed doors of a caucus or cabinet meeting, meaning that often our MP’s or MLA’s are not in the room when the decisions impacting on our lives are made. It’s a valid point and part of a democratic deficit that has taken root in Canada.
He may however, wish look closer to home on that front, as we gather that his complaint, is rather similar to one voiced locally by many residents about a city council that still makes a number of its decisions in camera and behind closed doors.
For those that tend to throw their weekly paper in the recycle bin before even looking at it, we Podunkicize the mayors column below, hot from the pages of the Northern view.
All in all, it makes for a fascinating inside look at the way a municipality is governed and a submission that should provide for more than a bit of conversation around the town for the next little while.
For if one thing is certain in Podunk, discussing (sometimes quite intensely) how our elected officials conduct their (and our) business, is also “the Prince Rupert way”.
Mayoral View: the Prince Rupert way is working well
By - Mayor Herb Pond
The Mayor in his weekly column explained how the provincial government had recently patted our town’s politicians on the back for their deft handling of the financial crisis of the last few years. The mayor coined the phrase “The Prince Rupert way” as a form of definition for solid municipal governance in times of trouble.
The Mayor recounted how the Premier of the province had expressed how impressed he was with the leadership exhibited by Prince Rupert council in these troubled times. From those seeds of respect, the Mayor has cobbled together a policy manual of sorts on how to govern, by forging a number of alliances that should in a perfect world benefit the good of the whole.
In the body of his column for the free local weekly paper, he points out how the city didn’t whine when thing went south financially, instead, we are to gather that when the going got tough, the tough got going.
He touched on the local economic development agency which was partnered with Port Edward and has made strides to insert the image of Prince Rupert/Port Edward into the bureaucracies of Victoria and Ottawa. Which we guess is a good thing, but it’s one that hasn’t really translated into any massive insertion of jobs to the local community yet.
Considering that both the two main projects currently on the go, the Container Port and the Gambling Mecca, were most likely going to go ahead with our without the city’s bureaucratic pursuits, we wonder if perhaps a bit more attention to the private sector might not benefit the overall economic climate for the city. Not all jobs are going to come from coffee chats with a cadre of government officials after all, attracting some solid industrial development might go a long way in solidifying our tenuous economic base.
Bureaucracy however was a continual theme of the Mayors column; he suggests that the future will require much more intensive lobbying of out of town politicians and bureaucrats, which he suggests will mean more travel to those centers of power. The quote from his submission “We must travel to the decision-makers more frequently”, we gather means an increase in the travel budget for a mayor, his council and our municipal bureaucrats.
It too is a concept that seems to have often been part of “the Prince Rupert way” as well!
He also tackled the issue of how government decisions are made, pointing out that today many decisions in Ottawa or Victoria are conducted behind the closed doors of a caucus or cabinet meeting, meaning that often our MP’s or MLA’s are not in the room when the decisions impacting on our lives are made. It’s a valid point and part of a democratic deficit that has taken root in Canada.
He may however, wish look closer to home on that front, as we gather that his complaint, is rather similar to one voiced locally by many residents about a city council that still makes a number of its decisions in camera and behind closed doors.
For those that tend to throw their weekly paper in the recycle bin before even looking at it, we Podunkicize the mayors column below, hot from the pages of the Northern view.
All in all, it makes for a fascinating inside look at the way a municipality is governed and a submission that should provide for more than a bit of conversation around the town for the next little while.
For if one thing is certain in Podunk, discussing (sometimes quite intensely) how our elected officials conduct their (and our) business, is also “the Prince Rupert way”.
Mayoral View: the Prince Rupert way is working well
By - Mayor Herb Pond
The Northern View
May 16 2007
Most people know I don’t embarrass easily. But I was blushing when the Premier spoke about the leadership of Prince Rupert City Council to a room full of local government officials gathered in Williams Lake for the North Central Municipal Association’s AGM. It was both inspiring and humbling. I also understood what he was saying.
When this community had been hammered by the worst financial storm imaginable, we didn’t whine about it. We put together an action plan, set about building partnerships and began rebuilding. That’s just the Prince Rupert way, but apparently it’s not as common as we assume.
In this changing world, it is more critical than ever for rural communities to forge strong ties with their federal and provincial counterparts. As big urban centers continue their rapid growth, often at the expense of rural communities, a massive shift of political power is occurring. That’s been well documented. But often overlooked is the fact that the people who comprise those large urban centers have also changed dramatically. They no longer know us.
In the fifties and sixties, most people in the large urban centers either came from rural BC or had family living here. They had a strong sense that the wealth of the province came from forestry, fishing and mining, and that maintaining healthy rural communities was critical to the fiscal well-being of BC and Canada. There was a recognition that a share of revenues should be returned automatically to rural communities. They understood that rural hospitals, schools, airports, etc. might not always make sense on a population basis, but that they were necessities to maintaining the flow of revenue into government coffers.
Today the majority of the population in the dense urban centers has no connection whatsoever to rural B.C. It’s not that they don’t care; it’s that they just don’t get us. The greatest example of this is the universal move to density-driven decision making. How many doctors do you need? Where should the next school go? How long is your airport runway? Simple. Insert the population data, crunch a formula and out comes the answer. And it has worked well in deciding which part of Surrey most needs a new school.
But it has been an abysmal failure in rural B.C., where all too often the answer is ½ a doctor or 1/3 of a runway.
Complicating things further is the parliamentary system of government which we live by in Canada at both the provincial and federal level. All meaningful decisions are made by the governing party behind the closed doors of caucus or cabinet meetings. Which means that no matter how hard our current MP or MLA works, they can’t effectively represent us because they are not in the room when the decisions are made.
All this leads to a new role for local government in rural communities. We can no longer sit back and wait for good things to come, but instead must be active lobbyists for our communities. We must travel to the decision-makers more frequently. We must forge partnerships to increase our voice. And we must stay focused on our message. In essence, the Premier was saying that the community of Prince Rupert has done a good job, and he’s right.
Rather than going it alone, we formed a joint economic development agency with Port Edward and that group has been extremely effective at inserting Prince Rupert/Port Edward into planning at the highest levels in both the federal and provincial bureaucracies. Citizen volunteers are actively and positively representing Prince Rupert on key provincial and federal boards and council has taken active leadership roles in a host of key organizations
In each instance our community’s message is focused and positive. We don’t whine about the past, we talk about our future. It’s the Prince Rupert way… and its working.
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