After a week away, I returned to work Monday and caught up with what had happened in Langley.
One news item that caught my attention was a verbal battle royal at Langley Township council, with Mayor Rick Green and Councillor Jordan Bateman the main combatants.
While such arguments have been frequent, the duration and nastiness of this one stood out. The root of this dispute, as I understand it, is whether the mayor must always follow the will of council, or whether he can spend taxpayers’ money or ask for action on his own.
The background is this. In the B.C. municipal system, the mayor has limited powers. He or she has one vote on council, but also chairs the council meetings, names committee members (to most, but not all committees) and has the power to bring back an item for reconsideration at a council meeting.
Most of the mayor’s “power” is in name, rather than fact. The mayor is seen by people in the community as the top elected official. The mayor is asked to attend events, pose for photos and be the official voice of the elected council.
When there is a general spirit of harmony and collegiality at council, this comes easily. However, when a majority of council members disagree with the mayor on almost everything, it is impossible for the mayor to be that voice.
We’ve been down this road before in Langley. The most notable example was Joe Lopushinsky, who was elected mayor of Langley City in 1988, and then re-elected in 1990. He served a total of five years in office, but never had the support of the majority of council. The City administrator quit as soon as he was elected, and Lopushinsky had no shortage of disparaging things to say about past and present councillors and some senior administrators.
Yet at the same time, the City continued to function — albeit in a fractious kind of way, particularly at council. Eventually, the voters chose to turf Lopushinsky, but not without giving him a fair chance to accomplish what he said he wanted to. They determined that he had not done so.
In Langley Township, a much milder version of the same scenario occurred when John Scholtens was elected mayor in 1993. He never had the support of the majority of council on more than a few scattered issues in his first term, although the atmosphere was generally civil.
That led him to put together the Langley Leadership Team in 1996, which won majority control of both council and the school board. Ironically, while the LLT accomplished a great deal by holding a majority of council seats, the methods used on many issues turned off voters. Scholtens lost in 1999, and by 2002, the LLT was dead.
Green has adopted some of the tactics of Lopushinsky, appearing to have no interest in what other members of council think. He has positioned himself as an underdog as he prepares to run again, with the big, bad majority against him. In the words of John Diefenbaker, he thinks that “everyone is against me, except the people.”
In 1993 in Langley City, and in 1999 in Langley Township, voters came out in droves to pass judgment on fractious councils — 36 per cent in the City, and more than 40 per cent in the Township. In November, it will be up to voters to do the same. Hopefully, many more than usual will do so.
