West Vancouver Sea-to-Sky MLA Jordan Sturdy will no longer have two masters to please as he has stepped down from his position as mayor of the Village of Pemberton.
Sturdy, a rookie MLA but three-term mayor, waited until after Jan. 1 to resign as that is past the statutory date requiring a byelection to replace him before November’s municipal elections.
Had he stepped down earlier, Sturdy speculated at least two current council members would run to replace him, meaning two back-to-back byelections. While the cost of a byelection was a thought, it was mainly the desire to preserve continuity for the Village of Pemberton, Sturdy said.
“It would set the community back too far and derive too much uncertainty and chaos and it wasn’t really necessary,” he said. “We have a strong council and an excellent staff team. I have every confidence in their abilities for the next seven to eight months.”
Doing double duty was never too burdensome, Sturdy said, as the village only has about 2,500 residents and council meetings only occurred every two weeks, meaning he could do the job with about one office day per week.
“If the mayor is spending five days a week in the office, God knows what they’re doing,” he said.
Sturdy said he was meticulous in checking the Community Charter to be sure that being the MLA and mayor never put him into a conflict of interest.
As for getting two paycheques from taxpayer dollars, it was separate compensation for separate jobs, Sturdy said, and most mayors outside the Lower Mainland’s largest cities have second jobs.
“I don’t really buy that, particularly. If you do the job, there’s no reason not to be compensated for it,” he said.
“It’s fair to say there have been people who have expressed a concern about it but usually, we have the same conversation . . . and people go ‘well, that sounds reasonable,’” he said.
Ironically, Sturdy said, he will be less accessible to West Vancouver constituents when the legislature resumes in February compared to the last eight months he spent as Pemberton’s mayor, though his Horseshoe Bay constituency office will remain open four and a half days per week.
