A small, picturesque B.C. village — best known as a getaway spot, but lately for dysfunction among its elected officials — will vote to choose a new mayor and councillor following their resignations.
It’s the second byelection for the municipality of 1,500 residents in two years.
In 2023, a councillor resigned after stating he couldn’t work with Mayor Ed Wood and was replaced in a closely fought byelection last September.
In June, Wood resigned after alleging three councillors were ganging up against him and a sympathetic councillor.
That set the stage for another byelection, with a vote to replace Wood and fill one of the four council seats set for Sept. 21.
Councillor John Allen resigned his seat to take another shot at mayor, a position he’s held before.
He says if elected, he will stop the discord on council and prioritize council issues that have stalled, such as woodlands management, fireproofing the village from the threat of wildfires and ensuring public safety.
Challenging him in the byelection are Fred Talen, a relative newcomer to Harrison, and Greg Dykstra, a former Mountie, who has long been active in the community and at municipal hall.
Talen is a former land claims negotiator in the Northwest Territories and says his experience in conflict resolution will benefit the village.
“The dysfunction on the village council, as well as being disappointing to witness, has been dividing the town and holding back important decisions,” he said. “It’s time for a change.”
Sonja Reyerse-Peters, a former councillor and advisory panel member, is backing Dykstra.
“His background with the RCMP gives him the skills to negotiate and diffuse difficult situations,” she wrote in an email to CBC News.
Wood runs for counsellor
Four people, including former mayor Ed Wood, are vying for Allen’s empty council seat. He could end up reversing roles with the one councillor who seemed to support his prickly governance style and ambition to overhaul how the village was run.
Wood did not respond to requests from CBC News about why he wanted back on council.
Teresa Omelus, active in community fundraising, was defeated by Allen in last year’s byelection by 10 votes. She is running again.
Mark Schweinbenz, who owns a chocolate-making business and had a former career in the surgical devices industry, is also running along with Gary Webster. He’s a retired painter who moved to Harrison three years ago.
Schweinbenz and Webster are on the village’s environmental advisory committee and say they are committed to bringing a reasoned approach to governance.
“Working with and building consensus with people of different interests, perceptions and backgrounds is what I did for a living,” said Schweinbenz in a Facebook post.
“We’ve got a beautiful village here. We shouldn’t be fighting over it,” said Webster in an interview with CBC News.
Code of conduct
Harrison is just one example of several B.C. municipalities struggling to govern themselves, with councils fraught with infighting, acrimony and misunderstandings over the roles and responsibilities of elected officials like mayors and councillors.
Provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs Anne Kang has taken a mostly hands-off approach to local government dysfunction, imploring municipalities to solve their own problems.
Behind the scenes, though, the province has been working with the Union of B.C. Municipalities are on a joint initiative called the Working Group on Responsible Conduct, meant to provide resources for creating or strengthening governance tools such as codes of conduct.
Stewart Prest, a political scientist at UBC, says the province doesn’t have the power to force municipalities to enact codes of conduct or appoint integrity commissioners, resulting in a fractured process for some cities and towns.
“Given that this is a period of effective experimentation or innovation around this idea of codes of conduct and accountability among councillors to the public, I think it’s not surprising seeing various forms of conflict over it and pushback,” he said.
In July, Harrison council, minus Wood, did vote through a new code of conduct bylaw after months of disagreement over it.
General voting day for the Harrison Hot Springs byelection is Sept. 21.