The old joke says that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. I suspect there’s an equally appropriate metaphor to describe the regional district system of government. It’s the system that put fun back into the word dysfunctional, I learned last week.

To be honest, I had never attended a Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) meeting before last Thursday. Three hours (in good weather) of travel time to attend a meeting that might last six hours isn’t my idea of a productive day. Especially when only a small portion of that meeting might have any relevance to Advance readers.

The regional district system dates back to 1965 and the RDCK is one of 27 such districts in the province. The system was created “to facilitate the provision of services and to represent the residents of the Regional District of Central Kootenay in the most efficient and financially and administratively effective means possible in a fashion that meets the needs of the residents,” according to the RDCK website.

Clearly a system that was designed in Victoria by people who didn’t have clue one about the geographical and cultural makeup of the province, regional districts are pretty much guaranteed to be dysfunctional. Consider the RDCK. Twenty directors sit at the table. Eleven of them represent rural residents and the remaining nine represent “municipal” governments. I placed the word municipal in quotations marks because of the nine directors (coincidentally, a woman who is also one of the board’s brightest lights) represents Slocan, a village (once the smallest incorporated city in the British Commonwealth) with 350 residents.

Imagine if you will, being an administrator of a government in which 20 directors, each with their own personality, agenda and community issues, has the same right to be heard and to expect action on behalf of their electorate. Imagine, too, trying to effectively chair board meetings. People in any of those positions must spend a great deal of time feeling like the proverbial one-armed paperhanger.

I attended last week’s meeting because it threatened to have significant ramifications for Creston Valley residents. Only months earlier, directors of the regional district had agreed to fund a sub-regional governance study that is intended to examine the way services are delivered in the Creston Valley. The hoped-for outcome is to find a way of granting our four (areas A, B, C and the Town of Creston) regional directors more autonomy in making decisions that affect area taxpayers. Coincidental to that study, the Town of Creston recently received an invitation to be included in a boundary study being considered by the Regional District of East Kootenay, which is headquartered in Cranbrook.

In my opinion, whether the Creston Valley is part of the east or central districts isn’t particularly meaningful. Either way, we are out on the edge of a region, a significant distance away from the power base and with culture differences that make us unique. And let’s face it, all of the residents of Area A, which includes the East Shore, from Wynndel up past Riondel, aren’t going to feel at home in either the east or central districts — the area is simply too culturally and geographically diverse.

It may well be that finding a way to bring more decision-making powers to the Creston Valley’s four (or maybe only three, if Area A director Garry Jackman has his way) areas is the best option for a district municipality, which would be an easy-squeezy solution if only the province would decide to create a unique, pilot project out of our unique and geographically-defined Creston Valley.

The RDCK mission statement (“To facilitate the provision of services and to represent the residents of the Regional District of Central Kootenay in the most efficient and financially and administratively effective means possible in a fashion that meets the needs of the residents.”) says pretty much all that needs to be said. It has 39 words and uses “and” three times. It’s as cumbersome as the system itself. As taxpayers, we deserve better.

Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.