We elect federal and provincial politicians to four-year-terms, so it's kind of odd why their civic counterparts aren't given as long a leash.
Thanks to pending provincial legislation, that discrepancy will soon disappear, although I'm not sure the reasons are terribly compelling on either side of the argument.
I suppose adding a fourth year to municipal terms has advantages over the status quo by providing those we elect with more time to carry out projects and by cutting election costs, but even those benefits are rather nebulous.
Given it would result in one fewer election every dozen years, the cost savings have to be considered fairly inconsequential. What's more, the vast majority of municipal politicians serve for multiple terms, so the length of those terms is a bit of a moot point.
Essentially the only question the Liberal legislation creates for Delta is: Are we going to re-elect Lois Jackson every third year or every fourth year? The same goes for Bruce McDonald, Dale Saip and a host of others.
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether a veteran civic politician, and there are many of them here and on local governments throughout the province, serves four three-year terms or three four-year terms.
The knock on three-year terms is that it takes the first year for rookie council members to get up to speed and then by the third year they're in electioneering mode, leaving little time in between to actually accomplish anything. Bulking up that middle portion would seem to make sense as well as provide additional time to bring projects to fruition.
The pushback to longer terms has generally come from smaller communities where the pay isn't much, which makes it difficult to attract people to take on a role that impacts both their personal and professional lives. Getting quality people to commit to what's in some cases a glorified volunteer position becomes more problematic if it's for a longer period of time.
Fair enough, but just as the benefits of an extra year to get more work done only go so far, so too do the drawbacks of requiring potential politicians to serve a fourth year.
The Liberals support the legislation so it will be approved this spring and come into effect in time for November's municipal elections. Whether it changes the political landscape to any degree is dubious, but at the very least it brings B.C. in line with the other nine Canadian provinces.
