When it comes to city council these days, what I sense growing in the community is a “throw them all out” feeling. And I think that would be very bad for Kamloops.

Let me explain.

Yes, absolutely, the dysfunction on council has led the local news and even made provincial and national news.

People generally don’t like to see their leaders battling with each other. And for council, collectively and individually, to consider how to ease the conflicts would be incredibly helpful. I know none of them ran in 2022 anticipating this council term would be as challenging as it has turned out.

There is, thankfully, more than meets the eye with this council. There has been a lot of good work done on challenging and long stalled issues.

With the help of an online tool called Google Notebook LM, I analyzed transcripts of all the council meeting videos and all the meeting minutes. What emerged through this analysis was a council that, while dealing with dysfunction, has made strong progress in 2024 on a number of projects and issues.

City council successfully worked with the B.C. government and secured a huge funding commitment for affordable housing units at the end of June. Council also established the first board of directors for the new Community Land Trust whose goal will be to offer city lands for affordable housing.

Council created a new designation for airport lands which had already seen new business development on long vacant land and will hopefully spur on more.

Whether you support it or not, the sheer ambition in the Build Kamloops project — a long-debated arts center, an arena multiplex, and many other facilities in the future — is impressive and important. As a citizen, I appreciate these proposals, even if I don’t ultimately end up supporting them.

Council has wrestled with how to adequately maintain and refurbish existing community facilities and infrastructure.

This “asset management” work is critical and expensive initially. They have put consideration of added funding for asset management into the 2025 budget discussions.

I also appreciate how council has put a longer, broader discussion on affordability of tax increases on their early 2025 agenda.

Council also launched a beach cleanup program and continued supporting the Junior City Council program.

These are just a short sampling of council work last year that goes beyond what we often hear about in the headlines.

A lot of collective experience and knowledge would be gone if we threw all of the current council out in 2026. What voters should be looking for in 2026 is experience, knowledge, and a desire to serve — without the dysfunction.

Absolutely, we should also bring in new council members with new ideas and new energy. This often happens quite organically. Some council members don’t run again, and some are not re-elected.

But to throw out the baby with the bath water would set us back again at a time when we need, more than ever, good government.

Arjun served on city council for 14 years. He is really enjoying his post politics life