City council is working with staff to develop a code of conduct for councillors.
Due to new rules in the community charter, councils are required to consider codes of conduct within six months of the first regular meeting following an election.
By the end of April 2023, council must adopt a code or pass a resolution explaining why a code has not been adopted.
At Tuesday’s committee of the whole (COW), council debated a draft code prepared by Ross Coupé, the city’s corporate officer.
Back in November 2021, the former city council directed staff to bring a report outlining how council can hold its members accountable.
The former council then directed staff to begin the process of drafting a code of conduct and reviewed it in April 2022 at another COW meeting.
In February of this year, the new council attended an informal working session to discuss the draft with staff.
Out of that working session, council came up with five principles they wanted reflected in the code: integrity, accountability, respectfulness, leadership and collaboration.
Coupé said because several council members had positive views of the city of Kamloops’ code of conduct the draft he prepared used similar wording.
COW meetings give council members the opportunity to debate in full.
On Tuesday evening the discussion on the draft code lasted almost an hour with council passing a motion to discuss the code further at a future COW meeting.
A main point of debate centred on individual council members using social media and interacting with the public and media.
The draft code suggested when speaking for themselves as individual council or committee members on social media or to the press, council members will include “my opinion” or use a similar disclaimer to ensure it is expressly clear they are speaking for themselves and not the city or council as a whole.
Another clause suggested council members must not purport to speak on behalf of the city or council unless expressly authorized do so.
What’s your opinion about these aspects of council conduct?
Let us know.
READ MORE: Williams Lake city council asks staff to pursue developing code of conduct
monica.lamb-yorski@wltribune.com
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