Shari Green's announcement Thursday to leave municipal politics after two terms on city council and just three years as mayor, rather than run for reelection this November, is not as big a surprise as it seems on the surface.
Being mayor was not nearly as easy or as much fun for Green as she thought it might be. No doubt as a first-time city councillor, she looked at Dan Rogers and thought to herself that she could do that job and do it better than him, too. That was one of the reasons why she ran for the mayor's chair in 2011 and made Rogers the first one-term mayor in Prince George's history.
But after winning the election and taking office, she found herself trying to lead a group of eight men with their own agendas and timelines that often conflicted with hers. Managing those personalities and those egos towards a common goal was not Green's style. Under her watch, city council quickly became a dysfunctional and divided group. The politics became personal and adversarial. Differences could not be set aside in the interests of getting things done. As mayor, she has worn her open disdain of some of her council colleagues, Brian Skakun in particular, like a badge of honour, ignoring the fact that the same people who put her in office also elected Skakun. That hurt her ability to lead and to accomplish some of her goals.
To make matters worse, Green came into office expecting she could implement deep changes quickly and led the electorate to believe she could deliver on those promised changes with a snap of her fingers. Her frustration in discovering how complicated and time-consuming it is to let go of a city manager and hire a new one or to negotiate a new collective agreement with unionized city workers, to give two examples, was matched by voter frustration in how ineffective she seemed to be once she moved into her fifth-floor office at City Hall.
With city council on one side and city bureaucracy on the other, she learned the hard way how little power the mayor actually has.
Green's announcement also isn't a real surprise because running for a second term as mayor would interfere with her future political aspirations.
Her desire to succeed Dick Harris as the next Conservative MP for Prince George-Bulkley Valley has been as blatant and obvious as her refusal to speak to our media colleagues at 250 News. With Green loyalists now forming a major part of the constituency association's executive after their recent annual general meeting, Green is moving into high gear with her plans to win a seat in Parliament during the fall 2015 federal election.
All she would say Thursday about it was that she was a proud card-carrying member of the Conservative Party and that she was "considering other ways in which I will continue to serve this community and the region."
In that respect, she's about as subtle as a runaway freight train.
How refreshing would it have been for her to come right out and say that she wasn't running for mayor again because she wanted to serve the residents of Prince George and region in the House of Commons and didn't want to get re-elected to a second term, only to give her notice a few months into a four-year mandate to run for federal office.
She could have glossed over the fact that she would have had to overcome an expected challenge from Coun. Lyn Hall for the mayor's chair this November, as well as the fact that the sitting Conservative MP for Prince George-Bulkley Valley, Dick Harris, hasn't announced his retirement yet, although he is also expected to do so.
She doesn't want to be seen as pushing Harris out, even though that's exactly what it looks like and her announcement Thursday and her coyness about her future does nothing to change that.
Regardless of how Prince George residents feel about Green as a person and as a mayor, she still deserves thanks for her two terms on city council. She has been criticized for many things, some warranted and some not, but even her fiercest opponents have never questioned her work ethic or her passion to make Prince George better.
Green's departure also opens up the field for the mayor's chair this November. For those folks who honestly believe they could have done better than she did, get busy putting your campaign together and put your name on the ballot for November 15.
