WATCH: A municipal meltdown in the small community of Lantzville, where a good part of the council has resigned. Kylie Stanton reports.
In the last two months, the municipal council in the suburban Nanaimo-area town of Lantzville has gone from seven to three members.
The cause? Mass resignations.
“This last six months of this current council has been one of the most negative experiences in my personal working and volunteer life,” said Graham Savage at Monday’s council meeting, as he became the most recent person to leave.
With just three remaining – Mayor Colin Haime, his wife and fellow councillor Denise Haime, and John Coulson – the meeting had to be shut down because it no longer met quorum.
It’s forced the provincial government to step in.
“I have decided to use legislative authority to order that the remaining members of council will constitute a quorum until persons are elected and take office to fill the vacancies,” said Coralee Oakes, Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development in a statement.
It means the town of 4,000 will have a fall byelection costing $20,000. They also need to find a new chief administrative officer and director of financial services, as both of them have recently resigned as well.
“It’s small town politics. The commonality amongst the individuals is they opposed my election as mayor,” says Haime.
But former mayor Jack de Jong, who lost to Haime six months ago, says the mayor should be doing more to stem the crisis.
It’s important to have diversity on a council. You can’t have people that are all in the same milieu, do the same thinking. The mayor’s function is to heal the community, not create this kind of antagonism,” he said.
For is part, Haime is calling on those still involved in Lantzville politics to focus on policy.
“Moving forward, it’s a case where people should work on the issues, not work on the personalities.”
– With files from Kylie Stanton
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