JONESIE: Kamloops voters have one real job this election, but one more big consideration

OPINION

No city in BC needs an election as badly as Kamloops.

No one in BC needs to lose an election campaign as badly as Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, and I can’t think of a nicer thing to say about it.

This election isn’t about who the best candidate for mayor is — it’s an intervention. 

I won’t bore you with yet another shiny repetition of everything he’s done over the four years; we all know it’s a lot. News flash: He’s not in any way a good mayor, nor will he because he hasn’t learned anything and clearly he’s surrounded himself with the wrong people. 

One of Reid’s better character defects is his relentlessness. He won’t take no, he’ll never quit and that sounds awfully admirable until you realize that’s a trait he only shares with those dogs that can’t stop chewing their own feet.

Being mayor for four years may very well bankrupt the man. His income has been slashed and he’s racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses he won’t be able to escape from. I can only imagine how that impacts his health and that of his family.

Reid’s not a young man and he won’t pay this price alone. How much is that bill after four more years? You can ask him to stop, you can try telling him to stop, but you know he’s just going to keep chewing until you put the damn cone on his head.

If you like Reid and defend him after these four years, go ahead and vote for him, I guess. 

If you actually care about him, I suggest it’s kinder not to.

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When the ballots are counted after this election, we’ll know who’s in and who’s out, but I think we are going to find out something else important as well. 

The stink of these last four years hasn’t just fouled the horseshoe, it’s fertilized local social media groups into a sort of mating ball of bad ideas, a crop of mean hot heads festering in the product of their own self-expression.

They claim power and support for the manifestations of so much spare time, so much croaking, so much noise and now we’re going to enter the Find Out phase. Does anyone really support them? I bet it’s all their wet dreams. Perhaps they’ll quiet down then and sink back into the mud.

Not a small number of them are out there claiming the ‘Hateful Eight’ councillors are equally responsible for this business with the mayor, no doubt buoyed by the Mayor’s Armchair, Mel Rothenburger, author of my favourite quote of the election so far. 

He filed this bit of noir when dutifully reporting on *checks notes* the mayor filing his nomination papers.

“As I drive, I reflect upon the fact that Hamer-Jackson haters might take my presence at his visit to City Hall this morning as some sort of endorsement, and as another indication I’m one of those RHJ club members, but I don’t much care.”

Mel is seeing the door close on this chapter of Kamloops history and much of his audience along with it. Don’t worry Mel, I am sure your legacy is in tact despite your role in this escapade. 

The story of this term in Kamloops history should be taught in journalism schools. It should be on the back of tax notices and parking tickets, yearly presentations in school gymnasiums, all for one message about democracy: THIS IS WHAT CAN HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T PAY ATTENTION. 

Millions of dollars pissed away for absolutely nothing, national headlines for ridiculousness, just because Reid seemed like a good idea at the time. That’s not on the other councillors. They didn’t initiate anything, they reacted and with a few exceptions I can’t find fault with the appropriateness of their response either.

They don’t deserve to be kicked out of office over Reid Hamer-Jackson.

If they deserve to be kicked out, it’s for financial mismanagement. 

While everyone was watching the drama, this council sunk taxpayers into generations of debt only the sunniest and rosiest of outlooks could justify and sustain.

I get it, I remember. Covid destroyed all the growing momentum for a performing arts centre. When it broke there was a kind of pent up demand, a ‘let’s get it done, life goes on from the pandemic’ attitude — we were all feeling those things. But you elect councillors to make sober considered decisions.

They signed on for not just a performing arts centre but a sports multiplex — both amid record inflation, disrupted supply chains and uncertain future. The costs of these builds were orders of magnitude higher than previous builds. 

And this council was so gung-ho, they presumed taxpayers wanted this burden so badly, they didn’t even need to vote — on hundreds of millions of dollars in optional costs.

Worse, as far as we can tell, they did so with little consideration for other, future non-optional costs on the horizon. Kamloops already has the highest debt ratio in the entire province and must now build a new police station. City hall needs to be replaced. None of these expenses helps deal with one of the top quality of life issues — street crime and disorder — nor invests in future income potential, just more operating expenses.

Now we have trade wars, economic uncertainty, perhaps a looming recession. Mills are closing across the province and there just happens to be a big one in town paying a lot of taxes. 

That’s a lot of risk to assume. But hey: This is what can happen if you don’t pay attention.

— Marshall Jones is the editor of iNFOnews.ca

— Minor edits were made by the author at 6:12 a.m. Oct. 9, 2026 including the addition of a reference to the arena project, which somehow got missed in the original version.