Vernon City Hall (photo/Vernon Matters)

By Kevin Rothwell

Watered down

Worship letter fires up debate

Jan 26, 2021 | 4:00 AM

A letter to the provincial government requesting that worship houses be declared an essential service resulted in a lengthy debate over the consistency of letters sent to third parties.

Two weeks ago Vernon council passed a motion 5-2 in favour of pressing the province to declare houses of worship an essential service.

Vernon Mayor Victor Cumming and Coun. Brian Quiring were opposed to the motion, and that information was included in the letter signed by the mayor.

The majority of council couldn’t recall another occasion where the vote was recorded on a letter to a senior letter of government and some members of council felt it watered down the intent of the correspondence.

“It lessens the impact of the letter. This is the will of council, but yet here are the people are opposed to it,” Coun. Kari Gares said.

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Coun. Scott Anderson accused the mayor of subversion.

“It is the responsibility of the mayor to speak for council in official communiques like this, and not speak for himself,” Anderson said. “It’s frankly arrogant, it seems petulant and quite possibly a failure of duty to the office of the mayor.”

“I don’t see anything unusual about it. It’s exactly as worded in the motion, straight out of the minutes,” Mayor Cumming said.

Staff indicated the motion was cut and pasted into the letter.

Council passed a motion stating that future letters would only reflect that the item had been carried and not include information regarding what the vote was.