Trail councillor Colleen Jones will take over this week as the city’s representative on the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary board, but her appointment further emphasized divisions on council.
Council voted 4-3 on Monday in favor of assigning the role to Jones rather than councillor Paul Butler. Jones was elected with support from councillors Robert Cacchioni, Carol Dobie, and Eleanor Gattafoni Robinson. Butler had the support of Mayor Lisa Pasin and councillor Sandy Santori.
Cacchioni is stepping down from the position as of April 1 because he doesn’t plan to run for re-election in the fall.
However, Pasin said she was concerned about a “lack of procedural fairness” surrounding the matter, alleging Cacchioni had been grooming Jones for the role before council made any decision on his replacement.
She quoted an email Cacchioni sent to city staff confirming he would be stepping down and adding that he had kept Jones up to date on RDKB matters and suggested his files would have to be transferred to a new computer for her.
“These actions of self-selecting and training a new RDKB representative in advance of a duly convened meeting do not follow the rules of procedural fairness or good governance and are extremely disrespectful to the City of Trail as an institution and every other elected official,” Pasin said.
She said council previously discussed changing its regional district representative last August, but Jones declined the nomination at the time. She accepted a subsequent nomination to serve as alternate in place of Pasin, but then withdrew her name.
Pasin said she was confused why Cacchioni would provide training prior to council appointing someone and if training was needed on RDKB matters, all of council should have been invited, “not just a preferred candidate.”
“Self-selecting candidates and providing exclusive training opportunities for certain members of council … is entirely inappropriate and undemocratic,” she said, offering an apology to “all those elected officials here today who were unaware of and not asked to engage in exclusive training sessions.”
However, Cacchioni bristled at Pasin’s comments.
“I’m really disappointed in what you said,” he told her. He said Jones was the only member of council he was aware of who was interested in the position. “I see nothing wrong in me providing information. Anybody who wanted information was free to talk to me.”
Jones said she was upset with the tone of Pasin’s comments, which “questioned my integrity and even my credibility to be in this position.”
She also noted that Santori and Butler supported her nomination in August.
“I assumed there was an opportunity. I reached out to Robert for the information. He didn’t choose me, I reached out to him and he shared the information because he knew I was interested. I hope the citizens of Trail are paying attention right now.”