Williams Lake City Councillor Ivan Bonnell will be Mayor Walt Cobb’s replacement as the City’s Cariboo Regional District Director for the remainder of the 2020/2021 and term and the 2021/2022 term.
Councillor Jason Ryll will also continue to serve as the City’s Alternate Director.
The decision did not come without questioning, as Councillors Sheila Boehm and Ryll expressed their interest in the positions.
“I was actually not quite sure why this was done,” Councillor Beohm said, “Councillor Ryll was already serving as the alternate, I think the natural thing was for him to be done as the director, he’s been on as the alternate for a while now. [Even I] expressed interest in being an alternate for this and to get experience, and no offence to Councillor Bonnell, but how do new people get experience unless you’re exposed to some of these roles?”
“I was actually going to wait until the December meeting to appoint because Councillor Ryll was our alternate,” Cobb said in response to Boehm, “but the Council at that committee level decided we needed to make the appointment now, I’ll do whatever I was going to do in December now. My rationale for picking Councillor Bonnell is mainly the experience, there’s a lot of things happening at the Regional District, there’s the extensive budget process that’s going on right now. Councillor Bonnell has the experience but he also the background on the budget process, but he also has the time.”
“I understand your reasoning, I have to say,” Ryll said, “I echo some of Councillor Boehm’s comments and position, I think that I’ve served well as the alternate for the last three years, and it would really surprise me that this recommendation went the way it has gone so far. With all due respect to Councillor Bonnell, he’s got many more years of experience in local government than I do comparatively, but we’re back to the conversation of ‘how does one get experience unless they actually do the job?’. Having done the job for the last three years, it made sense to me that as the alternate, ‘why have an alternate if the alternate’s not going to be able to have the ability to advance to actually be the main seat at the table? My record I think speaks for itself, not that Councillor Bonnell’s doesn’t.”
Councillor Bonnell reminded council that the appointment was a council decision.
The motion to appoint Council Bonnell was passed four votes to three. Mayor Cobb, and Councillors Brenner, Bonnell and Nelson voted in favour, and Councillors Boehm, Ryll and Smith were opposed.