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And now the news

What’s new? Oops, sorry, wrong question.
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What’s new?

Oops, sorry, wrong question. What’s news?

Having never had the benefit of studying journalism — there was just something about the whole “objectivity” thing that ran counter to my highly subjective view of the world — I’m struck by what a tough question that seemingly simple question turns out to be.

For example, we would probably all agree last week’s Pique story about 62 local B.C. governments signing the Climate Action Charter — thus agreeing to make their operations carbon neutral, whatever that means, by 2012 — was news. The more cynical among us would consider it news that 62 governmental entities agree on anything. And those of us hopelessly cynical will consider it monumental news if any of the 62 actually manage to even turn the corner on their carbon emissions and begin to measurably reduce them at all by 2012.

Why was that news? Let’s face it, governments are always full of… lofty goals and ideals. Press releases from governments touting noble goals reach newsrooms like confetti reaches floors at New Year’s parties. Press releases announcing goals have actually been met? Less like confetti. More like finding a hundred dollar bill floating on the breeze.

But that announcement was news. It met the criteria. It was immediate, the UBCM conclave had just wrapped up. It was arguably proximate; if it happens, it will probably have some impact on our lives. Assuming it is followed by actions, it meets the test of being consequential. And, of course, it was announced by prominent, powerful folks.

And perhaps most importantly, someone had the presence of mind to think, “Hey, I’m betting our constituents would want to hear about this. Maybe we should tell them.”

I don’t know who had that last thought. It might have been someone whose job it is to communicate what the UBCM does. It might have been a PR person. But somewhere in the background, the people making the decision and the people responsible for communicating the decision came to a meeting of the minds, either implicitly or explicitly. Communication doesn’t just happen. It ain’t like breathing.

Which leads us to today’s question. Why wasn’t the decision to bump Whistler’s fire chief to the head of the non-market housing line deemed news? Why wasn’t it communicated to the community?

Was it news? I’ll go out on a limb here and say yes, yes it was news. Why was it news? Well, let’s run it through the screens. It passes the test of immediacy; it was happening more or less in real time. It passes the test of proximity. In a town of 10,000 or so permanent residents where over 1,000 are represented by the 705 names on WHA’s waitlist I feel secure in saying at a minimum 10 per cent of Whistleratics were definitely interested to know they’d just been bumped down a rung on the ladder.

The element of prominence was present. The fire chief is a prominent guy in any community and the people making the decision, municipal council, are très prominent. Is there conflict present in this story? Well, maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. Since this element goes to the heart of the matter, we’ll come back to it.

Is there emotion or human interest in this story? For anyone high enough on the waitlist to have thought they had a shot of buying into Lakeside — and they would have had to been waitlisted for five years or longer — I’m willing to bet it was a hugely emotional story that someone was VIPed to the front of the line.

Finally, does this story bear consequence? Does it impact the people of Whistler? Does anything? Oops, there’s that cynicism again. Of course it does. Any action taken by our local government that leaves people feeling the system is rigged has a huge impact. It calls into question the fairness we expect from our municipal government. Favouritism is so banana republic.

Even without conflict — and I don’t mean conflict as in conflict of interest, more conflict as in a clash of ideologies — bumping the chief up to the front of the housing line would be news. But it is at least one variation of conflict that makes it even more compelling as news. That’s the conflict between “need to know” and “nice to know.” It’s the conflict between inside information and outside ignorance. And since it seems to be a problem that crops up in, at least, our local government over and over again, it leaves me scratching my head wondering how long it’ll take — maybe forever — until the boys and girls running this town get a handle on it.

There has always been a need-to-reside requirement in the employment contract between the muni and the fire chief and assistant fire chief(s). That makes sense. Fire chief isn’t one of those jobs you can telecommute to. And there has always been a recognition that Whistler should, in developing non-market housing, make allowances for housing people employed in certain essential services. That’s why WHA has a number of units in its inventory for things like RCMP and will probably have to have something similar in the future for, perhaps, teachers among others.

But there were clearly complications with the decision that was made and the timing of that decision. The fire chief already lived in Whistler… in his own condo. Under the WHA guidelines, living in your own market housing doesn’t preclude you from getting on the waitlist if you fall under the definition of being underhoused. For two adults, if you live in a place smaller than 650 square feet, you’re considered underhoused. I don’t know how big the chief’s one-bedroom place at Nick North was. But what I do know is there are lots of people waiting patiently on the list who would consider a one-bedroom place of their own, regardless of size, palatial.

But that doesn’t really matter. It’s still council’s decision to make and the fact the chief lived in market housing only calls in to question the timing of this decision, not the reasonableness or unreasonableness of it.

What does matter is that council didn’t think this was an important enough decision to explain to the community why it was being made, why it was being made right now, and why it was a reasonable thing to do. I want to believe it’s because they just didn’t think about what their action might mean to the people waiting, and waiting, and waiting. I want to believe it’s because this town has a crappy history of communication and no real infrastructure to channel communications between muni hall and the public.

I don’t want to think it’s because council and the municipal administration is simply indifferent to the people on the waitlist. But whether it was indifference or bungling, the result is the same: cynicism, rumour, innuendo and, once again, a missed chance to be seen to be doing something right for the community.

It’s like watching the same movie you’ve seen so many times before.