It’s been a long four years at Kamloops city hall, and those yearning to see fresh faces around the horseshoe will soon finally have their say.

Those who have paid close attention to city hall since 2022 attribute it to not just a failure in leadership but a lack of experience, too.

Former Kamloops mayor Ken Christian called this past term the “four lost years,” describing a city that lost political momentum and credibility around the province.

“If you look around BC and talk to anyone that follows civic politics, they’re going to have a story about Kamloops and its level of dysfunction,” he said.

But he cautions against wiping the roster clean of past political work.

“I think we’ve seen what happens if you put people into position that have no experience and real connection to the organization that they’re proposing to run. You end up with headaches,” Christian said.

“It’s not unlike finding a dentist, you want somebody that knows how to do dentistry. You don’t want somebody that says they’re going to do it a different way or they don’t believe in what the dental college says to do. The same is true with a local politician.”

Much of the work done by city council has been overshadowed by the chaos that centres Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson.

Through four years of investigations, lawsuits, conflicts of interest, privacy violations and routinely combative council meetings, Hamer-Jackson has been the common denominator. He’s now earning a fraction of his mayoral salary, has fallen behind on his property taxes, and he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to banks and his former lawyers.

Yet sentiment among voters appears to be mixed on who to blame for the “four lost years”. It’s polarizing for some and, for others, they might be ready for a clean slate entirely.

“I think if you’re not involved with the minutia of it or really watching closely, you can see fault on both sides,” said Michele Young, a journalist with Kamloops Daily News for two decades.

Now retired, Young still follows city hall closely and said she has seen nothing like it since coming to Kamloops in the early 1990s.

“There were a few dramatic moments, but nothing like this. This has been non-stop,” she said. “I’ve never seen the lawsuits, the interpersonal friction or city staff being treated the way they’re being treated. It’s another level.”

Young suspects city council as a whole could have gotten more done without the seemingly inescapable dysfunction, but there have been notable initiatives and spending decisions voters might pay attention to beyond the bi-weekly city hall soap opera.

Beyond the chaos, big projects with multi-million-dollar price tags are likely going to be a hot-button issue at the polls.

“Council’s job is to be responsible for their spending, and I think since COVID it feels like life has gotten increasingly expensive and we don’t seem to ever see the end of it,” Young said.

City councillors are increasingly aware of criticism they faced for using counter-petitions for civic projects, particularly for $235 million in loans for the downtown arts centre and a multi-rink arena.

Meanwhile, all of council was aware a new police station, now priced at $160 million, will need to be built. The can was kicked down the road after a warning from RCMP and now the next council will follow through. What hasn’t been discussed beyond the occasional passing mention is the ageing city hall building and the need to replace it.

“I think some decisions have to be made, and better now than later because things will only get more expensive, but you can’t use that for everything,” Young said. “They need to spread it out and I think maybe they clustered them too much.”

That spending has made Kamloops the most indebted city in the province when compared to cashflows and reserves, but the past four years have also featured an often unified council attempting to take the province to task for downloading costs, though not always with success.

For former Kamloops mayor Christian, he hopes the voters will show up in far greater numbers than the 30 per cent turn out in 2022, suggesting they should focus on candidates concerned with things like utilities, roads, zoning and city spending.

“Boring government is good government,” he said.

The election is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 17 and voters should expect the entire cast of incumbents on the ballot.

Hamer-Jackson will be running against current councillor Mike O’Reilly and previous councillor Nelly Dever as he seeks to reclaim the mayor’s seat. The other seven will be running again for a council seat, and there are more than a dozen likely candidates who have also announced their intentions.