It was an unusual start to Tuesday afternoon’s Kamloops City Council meeting after Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, citing a potential conflict of interest, recused himself from the entire meeting.

“I recuse myself from this meeting due to potential conflict of interests and I’d like to turn the meeting over to Councillor [Bill] Sarai,” Hamer-Jackson said, at the beginning of his third regular council meeting since being elected as Mayor of Kamloops in October.

Sarai – who is the Deputy Mayor for the month of December – took over as chair for the rest of the meeting which lasted a little under 90 minutes, with sources telling NL News that Hamer-Jackson left City Hall not long after his declaration.

Typically, if a City Councillor has a conflict of interest or a perceived conflict with an item on the agenda, they recuse themselves and leave the meeting, returning once discussion on said item has wrapped up.

“First time I have ever seen a Kamloops Mayor recuse from an entire council meeting,” former councillor, Arjun Singh, a 14-year veteran at Kamloops City Hall, said on twitter. “Usually more specific reasons are outlined [but] Mayor Hamer-Jackson simply noted potential conflicts of interest.”

Reached for comment, Kamloops CAO David Trawin said he wasn’t sure of the exact reasons why the mayor left the meeting, noting it is up to individuals around the council table to declare their own conflict of interest.

“He left for the whole meeting, so I have no idea [about his reasons],” Trawin said. “You’re going to have to check with him.”

“Councillors have to declare their own conflict. I mean the corporation can get legal opinions on whether they feel a councillor is in conflict or not and stuff like that and let the councillor know, but they have to rely on their own legal opinion and their own feeling on whether they are in conflict.”

Sources to NL News also suggest that Hamer-Jackson’s decision may have been be due to a report from Social, Housing and Community Development Manager, Carmin Mazzotta. It was meant to provide the new City Council with an overview of the motions on health services, social housing, as well as safety and security concerns that were passed by their predecessors in 2021 and 2022.

That report also contained several references to ASK Wellness, which though its lawyer last month, asked the Mayor of Kamloops to stop making defamatory statements about the organization and its Chief Executive Officer, Bob Hughes.

Hamer-Jackson responded through his lawyer asking ASK Wellness to identify the statements that were deemed to be defamatory.

A report by Kamloops This Week earlier this week also quoted Hughes as saying they have no intention of pursuing legal action.

Hamer-Jackson has not returned calls to NL News but told iNFONews.ca that he recused himself from the entire meeting today “largely because of a closed council meeting that he wasn’t allowed to join.”

“They just had the closed council meeting they announced this morning,” Hamer-Jackson was quoted as saying. “I don’t know nothing about it, but it did have the City lawyer involved.”

Levi Landry talked to #Kamloops mayor RHJ about how he watched today’s council meeting from home: https://t.co/sFzhgkhRtz
What Reid says in the first few para’s about a closed council meeting he didn’t know about is inexplicable. Pic below from the agenda for the mtg on Nov 29th pic.twitter.com/SyhPUF4NBQ

— Brett Mineer (@MineerBrett) December 7, 2022

Reached for comment, Hamer-Jackson’s lawyer, David McMillan told NL News that the mayor “is in Kamloops” though that he “was not at liberty” to discuss the reasons around the nature of his conflict of interest.

NL News has also reached out to other city councillors, and Deputy Mayor, Bill Sarai, and will update this story when more is known.