Former Mayor Jack, has Jennifer's Back! Especially when it comes to provincial funding for City Council

Former Mayor Jack Mussallem
has given MLA Jennifer Rice
all the credit for recent provincial
funding for the City of Prince Rupert

Former Mayor Jack Mussallem has dipped a toe back into the  never still waters of Prince Rupert politics.

With the former municipal politician forwarding a letter to the editor of the weekly paper; sharing a few thoughts on the some recent funding from the province and the impact it had on the most recent City Council Budget planning.

Mr. Mussallem's composition for the editorial pages provide for some effusive praise of North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice.

With the former Mayor observing how "on her own initiative" she obtained for the City of Prince Rupert the 8 million dollars that came as a result of a February announcement from Premier Horgan, which provided a nice financial cushion for many communities of the Northwest this spring.

Province of British Columbia announces capital grant program for Northwest communities

In his short review of that funding, Mr. Mussallem adds perhaps just a wee twist of the political knife, noting how "this no doubt provided greatly to the municipal council's ability to give taxpayers a tax reduction, and repair some roads"

While Mr. Mussallem's observations are no doubt correct on how the funding did provide a bit of wriggle room for City Council this Spring as part of their work towards the civic budget.

He however, seems to have left out some of the efforts of the current Mayor Lee Brain, particularly when it comes to the quest for additional money from the province..

Not only is Mr. Brain not mentioned by name in the letter, but his four year long campaign to raise the profile of funding issues between the City and the province, were also missing from the short narrative which ended with thanks to MLA Rice, a grateful nod that was directed to her alone.

Now there is perhaps some cause for the former Mayor to have some hesitation to offer much in the way of a salute to the work of the guy who replaced him in 2014.

What with the focus of the Mayor's self promotion through social media proclamations and public presentations, which tend to throw previous councils under the bus at times; particularly when it comes to infrastructure and other financial issues that face the city.

There is also the underlying theme that Mr., Brain does seem to project mostly through his social media feed, that the only success found in the city in recent years came after the election of October of 2014.

A trait that would certainly grate on those who served on Council before during some very challenging financial times.

Conspicuously absent of a mention
in the former mayor's letter to the editor
was the current Mayor Lee Brain 

However, before we all turn the key to the city over to Ms. Rice, the record should still at least make note that Mr. Brain has been actively engaged in the ongoing quest of accessing more funding for the city from the province.

In fact, the now second term mayor,  has followed up on an initiative that was actually launched during Mr. Mussallem's time in office, that of the Resource Benefits Alliance project.

The program is an ongoing approach to engagement with the province, which continues to advocate for a larger share of resource revenues out of Victoria and that they be re-directed to the needs of municipalities across the Northern corridor.

From the short correspondence of this week the takeaway that seems apparent, is one that when it comes to how the provincial - municipal engagement of late has brought results, the former mayor seems to attribute all of the success on the file to the North Coast MLA.

The former Mayor's review of recent history can be found in the Letters to the editor section of the weekly paper.

For more items of note related to Prince Rupert City Council discussion themes,  see our Discussion archive page here.

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