Confusion over new council appointments to the Strathcona Regional District board saw one councillor miss out on a vice-chair position and resulted in two councillors showing up to sit in the same seat.
The Dec. 12 board meeting happened to be the regional district’s inaugural meeting which is traditionally the first meeting for the new set of Campbell River councillors elected to the regional district board.
The new appointees, Coun. Andy Adams and Coun. Ryan Mennie, both showed up at the inaugural meeting to take their seats at the table.
However, outgoing director Coun. Larry Samson also arrived for the meeting.
That’s because when council voted last week on its new appointments to the board, the motion specified that “the term of the appointments run from January 1, 2014 until council’s inaugural meeting on Dec. 2, 2014.”
Samson ended up giving his seat to Mennie and left before the meeting started and Adams took the seat of Mayor Walter Jakeway who did not show up for the meeting.
But because Mennie and Adam’s appointments aren’t supposed to take effect until January 1, both councillors sat through last Thursday’s meeting as alternates.
The only glitch was that Adams, as an alternate, was not able to accept a nomination from Quadra Director Jim Abram as vice-chair of the board.
Council made its appointments to the regional district board at its financial planning meeting on Dec. 10.
The city has been rotating its four councillors representatives to the board on an annual basis in an effort to ensure equal compensation for all councillors.
The two councillors who are not appointed as directors serve as alternates in the event a councillor cannot attend a meeting.
In Mayor Jakeway’s report to council on the appointments, he noted that Coun. Samson had requested to serve as an alternate in 2014 and Coun. Moglove asked to stay on the board so she could continue to serve as chair of the hospital board.
The councillors appointed to the regional district board are also automatically appointed as directors on the board of the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District and the Comox Strathcona Solid Waste service.