City council did the right thing the wrong way Monday, holding a secret vote at a closed meeting Monday afternoon to decide Pine Valley's fate.
By a vote of 5-4, mayor and council decided to keep the city-owned golf course, rather than closing the doors and hanging a "For Sale" sign out front.
The only reason anybody knows about the vote is because Mayor Shari Green was good enough to inform the media and residents at council's regular public meeting Monday night. Other than the results of the vote, she refused to provide any details about what was said at the meeting or the contents of a "pretty comprehensive staff report to guide us in our decision making."
The Citizen has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the Pine Valley report by Ian Wells, the director of planning and development services at the city.
Mayor and council took the Pine Valley decision behind closed doors earlier this year, hiding behind Section 90 (1) (e) of the Community Charter, which allows municipal councils to hold closed meetings if it relates to "the acquisition, disposition or expropriation of land or improvements, if the council considers that disclosure could reasonably be expected to harm the interests of the municipality."
So how could the interests of the City of Prince George have been hurt by the Pine Valley report being made public and the vote by mayor and council being held at an open meeting?
Now we're into more "ifs" to consider.
If a buyer had already come forward with a serious offer for Pine Valley, along with plans to develop the site, then how could council entertain such an offer without a rezoning bylaw in place, an exemption from the Official Community Plan and a comprehensive market-based assessment of the land's value, other than the back-of-a-napkin numbers thrown around in the KPMG report?
Furthermore, couldn't council have discussed disposing of Pine Valley in public without naming the buyer or the value of the offer?
If there was no buyer on the horizon for Pine Valley, then the discussion would have been far more hypothetical and the questions about the land's future could have had a full public airing.
The "ifs" would mostly go away if mayor and council would disclose publicly why discussing the potential sale of Pine Valley would be harmful to municipal interests. How would the city have lost money or lost the interest of potential buyers by having the discussion in public? Now that the decision has been made, what damage would be caused to city government by releasing the related documents?
Notice there's no mention about harm to the buyer, meaning it's not the city's job to be protecting the buyer's privacy or looking after any of the buyer's interests, financial or otherwise.
On the other hand, it can easily be argued mayor and council themselves have harmed local interests by not being more transparent and open in their handling of the Pine Valley file.
They made an important decision regarding the city's future based on information the public isn't allowed to see (the staff report) and then didn't reveal the discussion leading to the vote or how the vote broke down. It's damaging to the municipality when taxpayers are kept in the dark without a good reason from elected officials.
Coun. Brian Skakun was good enough to tweet Tuesday morning that he voted against hiding the decision on the sale, adding that "there was no legal reason to vote behind closed doors!"
Skakun was right to protest how the vote was taken.
Green and her council colleagues should take a mulligan on the Pine Valley issue by releasing the staff report and the minutes from that closed meeting Monday.
This is a corrected version of this editorial. Incorrect information appeared in an earlier online version, and in print.
