New Westminster’s Citizen of the Year no longer has to be a citizen of the city – but the recipient of the Bernie Legge Cultural award must still reside in the Royal City.
Gerda Suess, the city’s 2003 Citizen of the Year, recently expressed concerns that the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce had changed the award’s criteria to allow non-residents to be nominated for Citizen of the Year.
“We are honouring every nominee this year,” said Cori-Lynn Germiquet, executive director of the chamber of commerce. “The people who took the time to nominate one of their peers or nominate one of the businesses they felt excelled in customer service, we believe that if somebody takes the time to nominate someone, then we need to respect that and celebrate that nomination.”
Germiquet said the changes to the criteria for the Citizen of the Year and Junior Citizen of the Year reflect that we are living in a “mobile workforce environment” and there are a lot of people who give much of themselves to New Westminster but don’t have the ability to live in the city, for a variety of reasons.
“I support our committee, and I support our team in making the decision. We want what’s best for New Westminster,” she said. “Having somebody who contributes an immense amount of time and effort in volunteerism in New Westminster, we want to celebrate that. It’s all about community building.”
Germiquet said a New Westminster Secondary School student nominated for Junior Citizen of the Year is doing “amazing” things in the community but lived just outside the city’s borders.
“That’s how that whole dialogue began,” she said. “Then of course there was a couple of nominees from a citizens (of the year) perspective that the team had reviewed that as well and made a decision to change those two.”
The Bernie Legge Cultural Award, given to an individual who has made significant contributions to arts and culture in New Westminster, must still be a resident of the city.
Webster’s dictionary includes the following definitions of citizen: one who enjoys the freedom and privileges of a city; and an inhabitant of a city.
“That’s a really good point,” Germiquet said when told about the definition stating a citizen is an inhabitant of a city. “Maybe next year we can revisit that.”
The New Westminster Citizen of the Year, the Junior Citizen of the Year and the Bernie Legge Cultural Award are just three of the awards the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce will be handing out at its Platinum Awards gala dinner on Nov. 21. The Platinum Awards, a celebration of business and community excellence in New Westminster, also include awards for: Diversity in Excellence Award; Marketer of the Year Award; Customer Service Excellence Award, Not-For-Profit of the Year, New Business of the Year, Corporate Community Spirit Award and Business of the Year, with some of these categories including awards for different sized organizations.
Suess said she’s sure all the people nominated for Citizen of the Year are worthy of the nomination but believes the nominations should be open only to New Westminster residents, as the application on the chamber’s website continues to state.
“Does it matter? Yes, it matters to me,” she said about residency. “We have many, many good people living in New Westminster who do great things for New Westminster and are not getting paid for it.”
While she didn’t have an exact date that the criteria for the citizens of the year awards changed, Germiquet recalled that the decision was made sometime in September. With the nomination deadline having closed on Sept. 26, the chamber of commerce has moved on to the time-consuming adjudication phase.
“What we do is I personally read out all the nominations, and the adjudicators have a score sheet. Each adjudicator, based on the criteria, will score what they have heard,” Germiquet said.
“Nobody knows who the winners are until about a week or two later when we actually go through and do a final tally. That is why it is so long and so extensive.”
Germiquet said the adjudication process will determine whether there are any issues with any of the nominees.
“When we go through the adjudication process if there are any holes or any concerns in a nominee’s package, that’s when that would be addressed,” she said. “Just to simply say, sorry you don’t qualify (because of residency requirements) even though the person who nominated them went through tremendous amount of effort to recognize their contributions, that would determine itself through our adjudication process.”
Some people invest more time in the nomination process than others, said Germiquet, noting one of this year’s nominees has 160 letters from supporters.
“They have all taken the time to sit down and take the time to write their story about this person – I have goose bumps talking about it. That’s what this is all about,” she said. “It’s not the people you usually see typically in the media or who are the high-profile individuals. These are our hidden stars.”
