In his last act before taking a paid leave to deal with a sexual assault charge, Port Moody Mayor Rob Vagramov attempted to stack the acting mayor appointments for the next year with his perceived allies.
Last Thursday, after telling his colleagues he planned to step away from the city’s top job, Vagramov presented a motion he had prepared in advance that would have made councillors Hunter Madsen, Amy Lubik and Steve Milani the acting mayors for a four-month stint each, with the rotation ending in March 2020.
Alternative acting mayors were also laid out for the next 12 months but Vagramov left one person off the list: Coun. Diana Dilworth, who was not on the proposed rotation for both first and second acting mayor positions.
But one of her colleagues quickly spoke up.
“He probably has some ideas and he wants to make sure they are proceeded with,” said Coun. Meghan Lahti, who successfully moved to have Vagramov’s proposal deferred to another meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) that he won’t be attending.
“I moved deferral until he vacated his seat,” Lahti told The Tri-City News. “It’s not up to him who decides how we move forward as a body.”
Lahti said it’s important for council to discuss the matter thoroughly.
The original schedule, which had been approved in January, rotated the job of first and second acting mayor through each councillor, with most assuming the job for two months at a time. According to that schedule, Dilworth had the acting job for March and Lubik now has the job of filling in for the mayor for April, unless changes are made.
Tuesday, Lahti, who is currently second acting mayor, has the job of chairing the special public meeting to deal with the acting mayor’s job. She said it will be important to decide who should do the job and who has the time to do it as there are daily obligations that require full-time attention. As well, councillors need to discuss the pay for added duties and what those duties should be.
Vagramov earns more than $100,000 a year as mayor. Currently, councillors earn $500 above their stipends for the year for fulfilling the acting role of mayor when the mayor is unavailable.
Coun. Dilworth said she was taken by surprise by Vagramov’s last-minute action.
“I asked the mayor why I’ve not been included on his proposal. He made it clear it was his preferred choices, it was a political decision that I not be afforded the opportunity to act in the capacity of acting mayor,” Dilworth told The Tri-City News.
The veteran councillor said it was concerning that Vagramov apparently hadn’t consulted with his colleagues to find out who had the time and the inclination to do the job.
“What was really disappointing was that the mayor brought forward this proposal without talking to members of council to find out their ability,” Dilworth said, noting that Vagramov could be away for a year or more dealing with his legal troubles.
She also said a thorough discussion is needed because filling in for the mayor requires commitment. “There’s a lot going on behind the scenes as the mayor is the CEO of the city,” she said.
Among the duties, for example, would be to meet with staff, attend mayors’ council and TransLink mayors’ council meetings, meet with residents, community organizations, developers and business people, respond to traffic and transportation concerns, and set the council agenda.
“There’s the leadership role in bringing council together on the strategic plan and the budgeting process,” Dilworth said.
Other councillors expressed concern about the importance of the job and how it should be shared.
In an email to The Tri-City News, Coun. Zoe Royer she didn’t know of Vagramov’s plans before his last-minute motion because “there was no opportunity for council to discuss the matter prior to the emergency meeting held that afternoon.”
She stated that the job requires someone to be in the post for more than a month, and even four-month rotations might not be enough for seamless operation of the city.
Coun. Madsen appears to be the only councillor aware of Vagramov’s intentions to try to alter the rotating mayor’s schedule.
And while he didn’t have an opportunity to provide any advice as the mayor only mentioned his plan in passing, Madsen said he said it does “make sense” that the mayor’s eldership plan would “seek to put inlace, as stand-in mayors, those councillors who are the most likely to share his perspective and move forward enthusiastically with the platform of initiatives on which Port Moody citizens elected this particular mayor."
However, he said he was open to looking at other options.
Coun. Steve Milani, another councillor on Vagramov’s preferred lis, said he wasn’t aware of the proposed schedule and won’t be bringing the motion to Tuesday’s meeting.
However, should he take on the role of acting may for May and June, as is currently the case, Milani said he has the “time and energy” to do the job.
Madsen, a close ally who was named in Vagramov’s list as the first acting mayor, said he could see adopting the current rotation and asking councillors to take on additional jobs as required, or “completely reset” the current rotational schedule to allow for just one or a few councillors to occupy the positions for multiple months to “enable easier continuity.”
“There are strong arguments in favour of both approaches, as I said, and I look forward to hearing the views and suggestions of my fellow councillors tomorrow,” Madsen stated in an email to The Tri-City News, although he didn’t comment on what he thought about Vagramov’s motion.
Another idea is to have an experienced councillor as the acting mayor with a less experienced councillor in the second acting mayor’s job, as both Lahti and Dilworth have suggested.
However the job of acting mayor is handled, there is no question that Vagramov has left his post at an important time for city businesses, including finalizing the budget and a strategic plan to set out the work plan for the next three and a half years.
The importance of the mayor’s vacancy at this juncture was not lost on Lahti, who said: “I think we should be working together as a team, not be divisive.”
In an email to The Tri-City News, Coun. Lubik said, "I don't think it's possible to make a decision on what we should do going forward until we've had an extensive discussion on what the role of acting mayor looks like in this situation as far as responsibilities and what our options are as a council.
"I'm hopeful we can come up with a solution everyone is comfortable with as we've been getty very good at working collaboratively," she said.
Coun. Milani did not respond to a request for comment for this story and Mayor Vagramov has not responded to a several requests for comment since last Thursday.
— with files from Mario Bartel
