Under Council direction to create a more inclusive, consultative, and open-minded corporate culture, City Staff have been making great progress in resolving issues without using coercion or resorting to confrontation. I hope Council can learn to do that too. We have been strongly advocating the change within staff, but yet seem to be having a hard time breaking the habit ourselves.
This has never been more blatant than this past Monday when dealing with concerns about a particular boat moored at the pier. Councillor Coleridge said City Hall “needs more power”, should use a “hammer” on the Semiahmoo First Nation (whose members are responsible for the boat), and that the City needs “more rules and regulations”. I couldn’t disagree more… on each point: Power doesn’t solve problems; Using a hammer will only create problems in the long run; Spinning more red tape just for the sake of exercising power just creates more work for City staff.
I’d rather not be a power-tripping, coercive City Council with a fondness for red tape. I don’t think that’s good leadership for our community.
On this issue, Council directed that the boat be removed, and that a bylaw be written saying that no one can use the east float for long-term moorage and setting fees for its use.
That might all sound reasonable enough, until it is considered that there has not been a problem in the past — all this is in response to one boat. And they asked permission before they began using it — it’s not as if they’re squatters who just arrived one day without saying anything and never left.
So there are two things that make me uncomfortable with this decision.
First, it is supreme overkill. This is a huge amount of work for City staff to respond (not to mention on-going enforcement) to a single event that hasn’t occurred in the past and, considering the unique circumstances (First Nation fishing boat that first asked permission to moor there), there is nothing to suggest that it would happen again.
Creating a bylaw makes things very inflexible. It becomes more difficult to weigh the circumstances at hand and give latitude if reasonable. Bylaws are black & white and adversarial. They don’t encourage friendly problem-solving.
There are a long list of situations in which that rigid consistency is very important. But in the case of maintaining the east float as short-term visitor moorage, there hasn’t been a problem in the past and likely won’t be in the future, so I see no need to bureaucratize it.
Second, this is a very simple problem which only requires a very simple solution. I am very confident that a brief meeting of Semiahmoo and City representatives would find a mutually acceptable resolution. They might come to the exact same conclusion as Council — that the boat should be removed. But consulting them would have been respectful. It would have also allowed for the real possibility that there might be other solutions or negotiated compromises that could be found through dialogue.
Forcing someone to do something is not how to build respectful and constructive relationships. I feel that, in deciding to force them to remove the boat and threaten them by making a new bylaw without even attempting to talk with them first, Council has acted incredibly rudely.
The Mayor insisted that the message would be conveyed “diplomatically”. But my concern is about the message, not how it is delivered. No matter how politely or sensitively they are told, it doesn’t change the fact that they were not consulted prior to the decision being made. They had an agreement to park their boat at the pier, and then the City decided to have it removed without talking with them. What kind of values does this reflect?