The town of Jasper is launching an exploratory committee to look into new ways of electing or possibly even appointing the Mayor of Jasper.

The committee could recommend Jasperites lose the power to directly elect the mayor, who would instead be appointed by councillors, who will continue to be elected.

While nothing is set in stone and the committee will not make its recommendations in time to affect the upcoming 2010 Jasper election, the committee could  recommend everything from referendums on the mayoral selection process to how to greater increase proportional representation in Jasper for the next election some four years from now.

“We are a fairly new municipality . . . I don’t think that people are even aware that this is an option,” said Councillor Gloria Kongsrud of the possibility of appointing instead of electing the mayor. She advanced the idea of setting up the exploratory committee at the Tuesday, March 16 session of town council. The idea was approved unanimously by the other councillors.

Other municipalities in the area, such as Clearwater County, south-east of Jasper, do not elect the Reeve (the head of a rural municipality is called a Reeve) through a direct public vote. Instead, councillors are elected and once they form the new municipal government, they hold an internal election to decide the mayoral position.

Clearwater Council has decided this year, however, to put the issue to a referendum, on this year’s election ballot.

The Reeve of Clearwater county, Pat Alexander, said the change to a directly elected mayor could be a good one because a mayor appointed from a certain riding might be too beholden to that area that elected him as a councillor. The mayor or reeve should represent the entire municipality and having everyone in a municipality decide just who the mayor is should remove any bias.

As well, said Reeve Alexander, an internally selected mayor can lead to a lot of backdoor politics, where a mayoral candidate will make secretive deals with other councillors to get their votes.

Coun. Kongsrud explained to council that her worry was that should there be a race for the mayor’s job in an upcoming Jasper election, then several councillors may run for the spot. However, if a councillor is to run for mayor, then he or she cannot run for a councillor’s seat. The former councillors who lose the race for the mayors seat would then be left out in the cold when the new government forms.

“We’d be losing the knowledge that those people could bring to council,” said Coun. Kongsrud.