The Burnaby school board will be down a trustee until the next municipal election in October 2018.
Trustee Katrina Chen was elected MLA for Burnaby-Lougheed in last month’s provincial election, but she will not resign her school board seat – a move that would have triggered a byelection.
Instead, she has requested an unpaid leave until Jan. 2, 2018, after which time a byelection will no longer be required under the Local Government Act.
The school board’s remaining six trustees unanimously approved the leave at a meeting Tuesday.
“I guess our feeling was more around the cost,” chair Ron Burton told the NOW. “If the city wants to run a byelection, we could tag on, but we don’t want to incur the cost on our own.”
Both city council and the school board are made up entirely of members of the Burnaby Citizens Association, an NDP-affiliated civic party.
With the election of Chen in Burnaby-Lougheed and Coun. Anne Kang in Burnaby-Deer Lake, both bodies are now down a representative.
Kang has not yet announced what she will do with her council seat.
Last month, former civic candidate and Metrotown Residents Association founder Rick McGowan, who ran unsuccessfully against Kang for the B.C. Greens, said a byelection could open up local government in Burnaby.
“It’s a good opportunity for somebody who’s not part of the BCA to get elected,” he said.
City staff is in the process of gathering information about what it would cost to run a municipal byelection.
Deputy city clerk Kate O’Connell estimated it would take “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The city would have to hire a chief election officer “as soon as practicable,” according to the Local Government Act, and have an election within 80 days.
