Facing criticism from city councilors, the mayor of Kamloops spoke to NL’s Brett Mineer about his recent absence from City Hall.
Reid Hamer-Jackson says he left for Mexico shortly before Christmas and returned Wednesday evening, Jan. 11.
“I went to Cabo [and] I left just before Christmas and I got back yesterday – last night,” he said. “Everybody knew that I was on holiday. It’s no different than Bill Sarai [who] is on holidays right now.”
Hamer-Jackson says both his Executive Assistant, Crystal Gelineau, and the Chief Administrative Officer, David Trawin, knew about the trip. He also provided NL News with screenshots of texts to his Gelineau dated Jan. 4, 2023 – where she appears to be asking the mayor when he planned to return.
Gelineau also asked if the mayor planned to attend a “team building” exercise with councilors on Jan. 10, to which he replied ‘no I will not.’
“If you want to spend thousands and thousands of taxpayers dollars trying to get two people – like I said – one person that thinks a recovery and wellness ranch to help people get better and they think of it as a good thing and another person on the other end of the table thinks that its like having a concentration camp well how do you build a team with that?” Hamer-Jackson said.
The sessions so far have cost about $8,000, and another upcoming strategic planning session with the same facilitator comes with a $12,000 price tag. It is being paid for through a ‘Council Consulting Fund’ which is set aside in each year’s budget.
“You know when these meetings – when I first learned about them I asked CAO Trawin how much did these cost and he said $1,000. So I said, ‘I’d like to talk to the lady that is doing them.’ [and] so I talked to her on Zoom and she said it was six-to-eight-thousand-dollars and I was like ‘Holy!'” Hamer-Jackson said.
“I guess we gotta keep in mind here that we just had an election and the citizens of Kamloops voted for the team of mayor and council. They voted for us. So now we’re spending thousands and thousands of taxpayers money to try to have a team building session.”
CAO Trawin told NL News that pool of money is generally set higher in election years to cover additional orientation costs.
“I went to the first one and I wasn’t impressed with it,” Hamer-Jackson added.
“I read the Community Charter and I believe it should have been recorded because when you have that many councillors in the same room and you’re discussing a lot of different things it should be recorded because it’s considered a council meeting. Maybe I read the Community Charter wrong.”
Hamer-Jackson – who is set to join the NL Morning News with Jeff Andreas at 6:40 a.m. Friday, Jan. 13 – adds the voters of Kamloops elected him to lead the team, and so he’ll be ‘working hard’ to get that team together.
– With files from Victor Kaisar