Sparks fly as mayor Sulz confronts councillors over social media posting

Revelstoke mayor Gary Sulz opened the Feb. 12 city council meeting with a salvo confronting two city councilors over their social media posting habits.

File photo: Gary Sulz has been elected mayor of Revelstoke in the Oct. 20, 2018 vote. Photo: handout

Sulz singled out councillors Steven Cross and Cody Younker for their habit of posting and commenting extensively on Facebook.

In the run-up to the Feb. 12 meeting, both councillors posted on their individual Facebook pages and in community pages commenting on the proposed tax hikes in the draft budget, which was up for discussion on Feb. 12. Younker, and to a lesser extent Cross, have been active in commenting on media posts, social media posts, and engaging in social media threads on the subject of city affairs.

Sulz took umbrage at the tenor of some of the posts.

Sulz read out one some of the comments posted by the councillors, then confronted them on the posts, saying the practice was divisive.

Revelstoke city councillor Cody Younker.

When confronted, Coun. Younker largely deferred, saying he’d review what he had written.

However, Coun. Cross engaged in Sulz’s confrontation, and defended his social media posts as a way to engage with the community. “I did not see my post as divisive; I see it as informative,” Cross said.

Cross went on to single out the issue of bringing the Development Cost Charges (DCC) bylaw back to the council table. Sulz took issue with a post that Cross made on the topic of DCCs.

Sulz’s comments drew a general rebuke from Cross.

City councillor Steven Cross. Photo: Steve Cross.

Cross said he had been pushing to re-engage in the DCC bylaw, and that he’d brought the issue up with the mayor several times, but that it hadn’t led to results.

Cross said his view was the city could save a lot of money by re-engaging while the DCC study documents were current, and that it would cost more to re-do the entire process at a later date.

“I feel let down completely by yourself,” Cross said to the mayor, saying that the mayor had displayed “poor leadership” on the DCC file.

Cross also said council was falling behind on setting their agenda for the term. “I feel we could be doing much better if we had been given a better start in November with strategic planning.”

After some back and forth between Sulz and Cross that lasted in the range of 10 minutes, the confrontation concluded without an apparent resolution.

Sulz ended with a statement.

“I am all for free speech and everyone’s entitled to it councillors, but I feel this sort of engagement just enflames and incites discord an erodes trust community-wide. I know that you’ve already stated you feel it’s the opposite, so I am going to leave it at that. I just wanted to bring this out in the open so that those who are not on social media get a taste of what’s been going on.”

Update: Post-meeting media questions

During the media question and answer session at the end, the Mountaineer asked for clarification on the debate: Is the mayor’s concern about social media posting, or about the tone of the conversations?

Mayor Sulz said it was about the tone: “It’s the tenor of the comments. I find them to be divisive. When I see the words ‘mayor’ and ‘CAO’ and then I see things like ‘City hall giving the shaft to seniors,’ I take offence to that and I brought that to the forefront. And I brought it to the forefront because those who are on social media can actively see that, can comment [on] it, for the most part … behind the screens typing whatever they want, and so I wanted to bring that to the forefront because I have two councillors here at this table who are big on things being brought to the light, and they didn’t seem to take offence to the fact that I was bringing that for everybody else in the community to see.”

Coun. Cross also asked to speak, saying that he felt his social media posts weren’t divisive: “I understand completely the mayor’s concern about divisiveness. I don’t think, certainly for myself, I would encourage citizens to go and look at what I have posted and find it in any way shape or form to be divisive. I have asked challenging questions, but I have not been divisive. Citizens can judge for themselves.”

Cross added: “I have to say I believe in free speech, end of story there.”

Watch the portion of the debate over social media posts at the Feb. 12 council meeting here: