Kelowna mayoral candidate challenges city Facebook ads featuring Basran

The candidate challenging Kelowna's incumbent mayor is questioning whether it's appropriate for taxpayer-funded social media ads to feature Colin Basran in the lead up to the municipal election.

iNFOnews reported last month that Kelowna is one of the few cities that contracts out that type of video production. The segments also featured the Kelowna mayor more often that other B.C.cities featured theirs.

Tom Dyas and his team issued a news release today, Sept. 8, questioning the practice.

In the two years from February 2020 to May 2020 the city created 18 Facebook ads with only three featuring Basran, the Dyas press release says.

“In the lead up to this municipal election, between June 2022 and July 2022, the City of Kelowna promoted seven ads with a total of five featuring Mayor Basran, meaning the mayor went from being featured in taxpayer-funded Facebook advertisements an average of once every nine months to once every week in the lead up to the municipal election campaign period,” the press release says.

iNFOnews.ca was told by the city that Basran is the “official spokesperson for council and the organization,” which is why he’s featured in so many videos.

The mayor reiterated that position in an email he issued today to rebut Dyas' allegations.

“I will not apologize for continually trying to do a better job of communicating with our citizens,” Basran said in the email. “As the spokesperson for the city, the mayor will regularly be the face of our communications, on social media, in person, on the radio and otherwise.”

He argued that he's consistently been featured in videos throughout his term in office.

"To say this has increased leading into the campaign is just not factual," Basran wrote. "There are reasons why some videos are boosted, while others are not depending on the situation or issue at hand."

City staff also said some of the video work is contracted out because they “require editing, splicing and generally higher production for longer videos that are describing something complex.” Staff don't have those skills, they said.

Yet other, smaller municipalities, such as Penticton and Vernon, shoot almost all their video in house.

READ MORE: City of Kelowna's spending of thousands of dollars on mayor videos is unusual

The Dyas release points out the city paid a total of $74,321 to one company over the last two years to produce videos.

In the August article published by iNFOnews, city staff pointed out that about $9,000 was spent last year on videos featuring the mayor. The $74,321 figure is based on money paid to the production company in 2020 and 2021 and does not include money spent in 2022.

“As Kelowna’s next mayor I will commit to banning all City of Kelowna advertising spending not related to public safety, community engagement and consultation, or required advertising by upper levels of government,” Dyas said in the news release.

Basran lashed out at Dyas in his response to the criticism.

"If a candidate for mayor chooses to only inform our residents on a small number of topics when we deliver a diverse and wide range of services that positively impact Kelowna residents each and every day, that’s his choice," he wrote. "An informed community is my goal. But, given how thin his election platform is thus far into his campaign, he likely won’t have much to say on your top priorities. This is just another attempt to draw attention away from that."

Basran has yet to say whether he’s running for re-election but is holding a “Kelowna's Future, My Future” event at Red Bird Brewing at 4:30 p.m. today. 

READ MORE: Colin Basran to declare his re-election plans as Kelowna’s Mayor

Along with Dyas, Silverado Socrates and Glendon Charles Smedley have filed nomination papers to run for mayor.

The deadline for filing papers it at 4 p.m. tomorrow.

Municipal election day is Oct. 15.

 -—This article was updated at 11:24 a.m. Sept. 8, 2022, to add in comments from Basran.

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