City councillors seem to take word of staff as gospel

AKelowna city planner came close to calling Coun. Brad Sieben a simpleton at Monday’s council meeting. Seemingly chastened, Sieben promptly fell silent. What he should have done is rip into the staffer. If he was a West Kelowna city councillor, he probably would have. Over there, they don’t just take the word of city staffers as gospel. Over there, they seem to understand it’s not just their right but their duty to ask pointed questions and engage in sharp debate.

Kelowna council proceedings are a gruesomely somnolent affair. Councillors usually begin whatever question of staff they do manage to come up with by lavishing praise on the employee.

Great report, fantastic report, superb report. And would you like a raise? That sort of nonsense.

Hard questions, or even mildly challenging questions, are rarely asked by councillors on behalf of the people they’re supposed to represent.

The fundamental problem with most Kelowna councillors is they seem to think it’s their job to represent the city to citizens, rather than the other way around.

The fleeting but illustrative exchange between Sieben and planner Danielle Noble-Brandt came during a discussion, if you can call it that, of a staffled proposal that could profoundly change the nature of Kelowna.

The idea is that, in the next two decades, the city should encourage the building of more homes in urban areas — like downtown, central Rutland and South Pandosy — rather than the suburbs.

Higher density housing in such areas, the prevailing city hall wisdom goes, brings with it oodles of benefits. Such as more efficient use of existing infrastructure, more walkable neighbourhoods and a greater use of hallowed public transit rather than reliance on evil private automobiles.

“I wholeheartedly believe we must focus as much growth as possible in urban centres,” Mayor Colin Basran said earlier this year.

In between a past career as a reporter and his current gig, Basran was a real estate agent. I’m sure in that capacity he understood perfectly that most people, all things being equal, would much rather live in a single-family home than a condo or a 210square-foot micro suite.

In fact, a single-family home is preferred by 66 per cent of Canadian homebuyers, versus 34 per cent who dreamed of a unit in a multi-family complex, according to the Canadian Home Builders’ Association.

But this desire gets in the way of city planners’ determination to reshape the city. So, in Kelowna’s case, a wholly bogus survey was designed that purported to show strong support for focusing new housing in town centres and actively discouraging the construction of new single-family homes in outer areas.

This survey was based on 570 responses. That’s a vanishingly small number measured against Kelowna’s population of 130,000 people. More importantly, because it was one of those self-administered online surveys, it is of absolutely no statistical significance whatsoever.

But not one of the nine city councillors pointed this out, either because they don’t understand this uncomfortable reality or they’re just happy to go along to get along. Probably both.

Sieben, to his credit, asked Noble-Brandt if the city’s efforts to encourage most new residential construction in town centres might not drive up land prices in those areas, undermining its own efforts to promote affordable housing.

It was a good question, a desperately needed question, especially since the city also proposes to somehow eventually ban new development in some nowvacant suburban areas. Artificially restricting the supply of available land for housing will do nothing but drive up the price of land elsewhere.

In response, Noble-Brandt told Sieben that was a “simple” analysis that didn’t account for what she said were the many other factors that influenced housing prices. Just what those factors are is an open question, because Noble-Brandt didn’t bother to explain them.

Sieben was basically embarrassed into silence, and his council colleagues to their shame left him hanging there, not having the intelligence or courage or take up his line of inquiry. Instead, discussion moved back, as it usually does, to little of substance and interest.

Instead of orchestrating valueless public surveys like Imagine Kelowna that magically produce responses perfectly in tune with planners’ intentions, the municipality might occasionally use its vast resources to retain an economist to produce a report on the likely consequences of various city-shaping policy proposals.

Such a report might at least trigger some informed debate among councillors. When they’re only ever fed one storyline, it must be difficult to resist becoming a simpleton.

Ron Seymour is a Daily Courier reporter. Telephone: 250-470-0750. Email: ron.seymour@ok.bc.ca.