The City of Langford has officially amended its council code of conduct in the wake of a BC Ombudsperson report looking into claims of administrative unfairness which resulted in recommending the changes.
At its regular meeting Tuesday (Sept. 5), council voted 6-1 in favour of adopting the changes, which open up the code’s complaint process to members of city staff and committees where previously only council members themselves could file a complaint under the code.
The change was recommended by the office of the ombudsperson, and in turn recommended to council by staff, but council was not ordered to make them. Instead, the city agreed to have council consider the changes “in good faith” in response to the report.
The ombudsperson’s investigation and report was sparked by a complaint from Langford resident Ed Court alleging Coun. Lillian Szpak used her position to intervene in a parking dispute between her son and Court.
READ MORE: Report finds no administrative unfairness, but Langford agrees to take action
The report found no evidence of administrative unfairness as alleged by Court, but the city agreed to undertake three actions in response to it, and the ombudsperson closed the case. In addition to staff producing the changes and council considering the changes to the code of conduct, the city agreed to provide council additional conflict of interest training.
Despite an interruption from a member of the public in attendance for the meeting Tuesday night – which resulted in a recess and the meeting recording being halted, therefore not showing what happened during the recess – council’s discussion of the changes showed universal support for them.
The lone dissenter to the motion – Mayor Scott Goodmanson – defended his position by saying he strongly supports the changes, but they don’t go far enough for him.
“We’ve heard a good amount from people in here tonight, but regardless of what council decides tonight, we are going to have people who are upset,” said Goodmanson. “The issue I have with the motion as it stands is I don’t like the exclusion of the public (from the complaint process).”
Despite Goodmanson’s wish to further amend the code of conduct to allow the public to file a complaint under the code, the majority of council felt it was important to start with the changes recommended by the ombudsperson, then allow time for further exploration of what would be involved in introducing further changes to the code to include the public.
“This isn’t the end of the conversation. I want to emphasize the code of conduct is going to continue to be on our minds, we are going to continue to seek input from the public, and I think we all feel strongly we want to include the public in some way,” said Coun. Mary Wagner.
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