A second Thompson Nicola Regional District Director is calling on Board Chair Ken Gillis to step down in light of the forensic audit into past spending under former CAO Sukh Gill.
Speaking at Thursday’s board meeting, Spences Bridge Area Director, Steven Rice, says that will help the regional district move forward as it tries to regain the trust of residents and taxpayers.
“I’m not sure just moving in the direction we are doing is going to result in that change and accountability in moving the needle forward,” Rice said Thursday. “I fear at times we are moving the needle backwards and I just want the best for our constituents, and do that, I think, we need to make some really hard difficult decisions.”
“This has been so difficult to me because of course, we’re all family and we are good friends and we need to move together. So I hesitate because I want everybody to be happy but I think at this point, at this juncture of where we are as a board, it is a critical point, and we do need change, and we do need accountability across the table.”
Bonaparte Plateau Director, Sally Watson, also called on Gillis to resign last month.
According to Kamloops This Week – which broke the initial story about spending under Sukh Gill that let to the forensic audit – Gillis, who has been TNRD Board Chair since 2018, was given a letter from a whistleblower in Jan. 2020, two weeks prior to Gill’s departure.
Gill’s departure came with a TNRD board-approved $520,000 severance package, and a legal agreement that his it be called a retirement.
Watson told KTW that board did not see that letter until December of last year, almost two years after it was given to the Chair.
“If the board had known about this letter before the payout was decided, it is very, very likely that it would not have been a payout [to Sukh Gill],” Watson told KTW. “It would have been a justifiable dismissal.”
While Gillis did not address Rice’s comments, Kamloops Councillor Dale Bass did.
“It was obviously painful for [Rice]. It was painful to hear. I agree with him. I think he has given us all something to think about,” she said. “I have been concerned for quite a while. There was concern when I read some things in the paper that the chair said that were discussed in a closed meeting and I think somebody has finally said what we’ve all been thinking.”
“We have to talk about this somehow. We have to go home tonight and think about this, I guess, and decide what we are going to do. But I wanted to thank him because that was a ballsy thing to do.”
Prior to the knowledge about the existence of that letter, TNRD directors re-elected Gillis as chair in November ahead of the Oct. 2022 municipal election. The Grasslands Area Director beat out Kamloops Councilor Dieter Dudy in a secret ballot.
“One of the biggest challenges we face moving forward will be to regain the public trust. That said, I don’t believe that can be done by maintaining the status quo,” Dudy said in November.
“We have to be seen as truly embracing change, and that change includes changing the captain in the wheelhouse.”
