Council Wastes $38,641 On Sarai Investigation

Disgraced Councillor Bill Sarai’s refusal to resign has cost Kamloops taxpayers more than our pride. It has hit our wallets too.

Investigation Concluded

After about 6 months, the investigation is finally complete, and the report is made public. You can read it here: Investigation Report

At over $1,750 per page (22 pages), the TLDR is: Sarai breached the Code of Conduct and the recommendation is for Council to give him a letter of reprimand. Are they serious? Will they put that on Sarai’s permanent record?

Council Support For Sarai Not Surprising

Thanks to Mel Rothenburger (Armchair Mayor) for his great article on Council’s responses to Sarai’s personal admissions of guilt. Mel used a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to get a record of the texts exchanged between the councillors. You can read Mel’s article and the texts here: ROTHENBURGER – Secret tape…

It makes it pretty clear that Sarai’s fellow councillors barely raised an eyebrow over the truth being revealed. Dale Bass, who was deputy mayor for the month, had a particularly disturbing response: “All good Bill”. In fact, it seems the councillors were more concerned about the public demands for Sarai’s resignation than they were about his actions.

Equally disturbing is part of one of Sarai’s texts: “I was told to delete in 2023 and kept it as leverage”. Who told him to delete it? Who else knew about the recording? Was it one of the seemingly unsurprised councillors?

Request To Exclude Sarai From Ottawa Event Ignored

On May 27th, I emailed our council expressing my opposition to Sarai attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Ottawa. Along with my opposition to another group trip on our dime, I added the following:

“In addition, I am even more opposed to “Councillor” Bill Sarai attending this conference. His disgraceful actions continue to be an embarrassment to our city. Please do NOT permit further damage to our reputation by allowing others to view him as a representative of our municipality.”

Although most of my emails to Council are ignored, I did get a reply from Councillor Karpuk: “Rece and noted”. The email might as well have been ignored as Sarai did go to Ottawa, where he was credited for helping gain a meeting with the federal housing minister.

Castanet reported “Karpuk said the near 10-minute meeting was secured through a group effort, with help from Coun. Bill Sarai’s brother, Randeep Sarai, a Liberal MP who represents Surrey Centre, and Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola MP Frank Caputo”.

Sorry, Council. A meeting for you to cry about your failed funding applications is not worth the cost of Sarai participating in that event. Rather than blaming politics, perhaps you should seek some help with your applications. I hear your good friend Bob Hughes is great at it.

Sarai Succeeds In Suppressing Public Input

Ironically, the one with the most to hide is also the councillor who first made the motion to remove Public inquiries from the council meeting agendas. This was immediately after the entirely coincidental display of porn over Zoom. Was it a coincidence?

Speaking of coincidences, after a long delay, they added a highly restrictive Public Input to the agenda. And somehow they managed to allow a fictitious name to be registered and used the no-show as an excuse to once again ban public input.

Congratulations Sarai. Read another great Armchair Mayor article here: EDITORIAL

While other councillors have demonstrated childish and inappropriate antics, Sarai has set the bar for shameful and unacceptable behaviour. No apology can restore the public’s trust. If anything it has shone a spotlight on some of the mysteries.

I know I can’t help wondering if it was Sarai who was responsible for the Zoom bombing incident. Or if it was he who was responsible for the unexplained breaches of confidentiality. Where does Sarai draw the line?