Penultimate

Someone said to me recently: “You picked a hard time to be mayor.” 

This observation is both true and not quite true. 

Why true? There has been a lot written about the effect of the Covid 19 pandemic and its profound and lingering effects on trust in politicians and political institutions generally, including the vilification of expert opinions, even well-meaning reasonably well-informed opinions, that don’t align with expectations or desires. Elected in 2022, I was elected to the first post-Covid cohort of BC local governments. As a result, there has been both a general mistrust and questioning of decision making and intentions. In some ways it has made the role of local government representative a challenging one. As well, many people have become increasingly reliant on social media for information and are more and more being fed information that confirms what they already believe (see "The Answer Guy" column from the February 2026 Fernie Fix). It makes shaking people of their convictions, even wildly misplaced ones, very difficult. Social media has, for many people also become a place to express their dissatisfaction with every aspect of the world they don’t agree with, including many things that don’t even directly affect them. It’s a rage engine and engines consume fuel, both users’ attention and outrage. Weirdly, it feels like the realization of the long-sought perpetual motion machine but in virtual form, outrage begets fuel begets outrage. 

Why not quite true? I think one reason this has been a hard time to be mayor is simply that council has stopped kicking many problems down the road in the hope that someone else will solve them or in fear 
of inviting community opposition. You’ll recall I’ve spoken about moral courage before. As a result, we have taken on issues that were destined to be challenging. Not all of council has been united on these issues, to be sure but, and this has been well documented and much discussed on, you guessed it, social media, but enough of council has that some very big problems long slowing our community’s progress have been tabled and advanced and dealt with. There has been opposition. That’s okay, it’s the nature of representative democracy. 

The firehall is the greatest example of a large issue that has lingered for far too long. The shorthand: for 47 years our emergency response personnel have operated out of substandard, temporary facilities. The fact that they were functional, if never adequate, allowed many councils to either ignore the issue or to drop the ball previous councils had picked up and run with. It is always easy to say this (insert major issue here) is more important to us today than that (insert other major issue here). The fact of the matter is it is rarely this or that it is almost always this and that. A community, as we all know, is a multi-faceted, multi-headed creature. Good governance often means just being aware of all that is needed and prioritizing it according to very limited resources. Firehall, wastewater, drinking water, permitting processes, parks, and potholes. All of it needs doing. 

The process of deciding what gets done and what will wait is an effort to ensure all the most critical projects advance roughly in parallel. The citizens of Fernie need their leaders to have a broad view of all the priorities and to be comfortable seeing them all advance at once knowing that the nature of some will see them either complete, stall, or drop back in favour of shifting needs, regulatory hurdles, or resource constraints. Some will require hard decisions and real resolve to push across the line and, if you are just diligent enough, all your decisions will line up, and something will finally be achieved after decades. And, if you are really sure and careful in your judgement and decision making, even the courts will affirm a profound and community-first conviction. 

Finally, it really has been a good time to be mayor and accordingly I am leaving with mixed feelings. There have been challenges, both personal and professional, and a real desire to do the right thing not just for the few but for the many. But I leave knowing I did my best and, in doing so, was able to accomplish some great things. Have I made everybody happy? No. That was never my intention, nor should it be for existing or aspiring councillors. If they tell you this is their goal, they are lying to you (or themselves) already. My intention coming into this role was to ask: is it right, is it fair, and does it benefit the entire community? I can leave knowing that nearly everything we accomplished has made our town a better place. From housing, childcare, supporting staff and governance processes, to our new firehall, our city and her citizens are better off. 

nic.milligan@fernie.ca