A new citizens’ group will keep watch on city hall.

Members of NoVote2017, which opposed the city’s event centre proposal, have created OurNanaimo with the idea to hold city hall accountable for good governance, have better city planning and prepare for next year’s election. It also wants to grade byelection candidates to give people an idea of where the contenders sit on different topics.

Don Bonner, group spokesman, calls the organization a watchdog and said it’s needed because of a “severe” lack of leadership with council. OurNanaimo has 12 members, including former city councillors Fred Pattje and Blake McGuffie, and Rebecca Chan, founder of Women Watching Nanaimo.

“I like the organization because there is a number of people there who come from various walks in life and have experience in working in Nanaimo and living here,” Bonner said. “We together have a good ability to come up with some ideas and questions and things about what’s happening in our town and possibly where we might want to consider going.”

McGuffie wanted to be a part of OurNanaimo because he said having been a two-term city councillor in the ’90s, he’s come to recognize council is not functioning well to the benefit of the community; there’s a lot of internal bickering, conflict and senior staff who have decided to seek employment elsewhere and he’s concerned about the resignation of a councillor.

He said he hopes OurNanaimo will attract a better group of candidates for the 2018 civic election and vet them so the public can get a better idea of where they stand.

A love of this city, and planning for the south downtown waterfront drove Pattje, a member of NoVote2017, to carry on with OurNanaimo. He was part of the South Downtown Waterfront Committee, which came up with a vision and guidelines for the lands, and he said the event centre would have been the worst thing for the area.

“You can’t be doing stuff short-term that will impede the possibility of doing worthwhile stuff for that later on and that’s what happened and it got me kind of angry to be honest with you,” he said.

OurNanaimo has sent out questionnaires and a request for resumés to byelection candidates, with an aim to grade.

“It’s not so much we’re going to say this person is bad, this person is good, it’s we’re going to grade them based on what we consider would be good candidates for running for council, ” said Bonner. “I think the reporting on the candidates and their qualifications would lend the people of Nanaimo to have a better idea of who they might want to consider voting for.”

For more information, visit www.ournanaimo.com.

news@nanaimobulletin.com

For more information see www.ournanaimo.com.

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