I sometimes get calls from people frustrated with city hall. I try to give them my best advice.  As a former city councillor, I understand the multi-directional pressures city council members and city staffers face.

I also know that ultimately the citizens need to be in the drivers’ seat — all of them, together, not a small subset of them. And public servants need to continue to increase their responsiveness to those they serve, collectively.

Right now, we don’t trust our politicians much. And we don’t trust each other too much either.  Thankfully, there are strong actions we can take to build trust with each other and with our governments. There are also strong actions our elected leaders can take.

Here are some recent examples:

In my column in the September issue, I extended an invitation to people who might be more supportive of our current Mayor than I am to join me for a coffee or a meal. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from a lady who was very critical of me in the last civic election.

Joined by another critic of this current council, we met for breakfast at White Spot and had a pleasant, while lively, conversation. It was indeed a much different experience than commenting back and forth on a social media post. And it helped me better understand some things I thought were pretty suspect previously.

In the October edition of the Chronicle, an article by Sean Brady appeared titled ‘Mayors claim of bias unfounded’. The first line reads “Following claims of bias from the mayor, a third-party investigator working for the city has found none in his own work.”  I have to get this off my chest: although

I have no reason whatsoever to question the competency and integrity of the investigation, I think it would open up questions for many when an investigator investigates themselves. I don’t think this builds trust.

I know costs are building up for code of conduct investigations with our current city council but once these doors are opened, there are some hallways we should travel. We need independent investigations of investigators as well.

Councillor Mike O’Reilly launched his Mayoral campaign with some big-name support — notably two former Mayors. Also supporting him at his launch event were stalwarts in right of centre political campaigns in Kamloops. This is largely a group of people who have put their time and effort behind Terry Lake, Peter Milobar, Todd Stone, Ken Christian, and Dieter Dudy. And good on them for doing so. People like this help democracies flourish.

I’ve been advocating for only one current councillor to run for Mayor but a good friend, a stalwart NDPer, shared that Mike may not represent a broad swath of the community.

Will Mike reach out to groups where he may not have a natural support base? If another Mayoral candidate emerges to represent people with more left or green aligned views, will the race stick to policy and not get personal and negative?

Good answers to these questions will help build trust back.