Delay OCP until 2019

The City of Penticton is about to embark on a labour-intensive and costly process to update its Official Community Plan. The OCP addresses everything from parks and arenas to zoning in residential and rural areas. It’s mandated by law although there’s no regulation in place as to how often it needs to be updated. In the case of Penticton it was last rewritten in 2002. Council has budgeted $250,000 on its OCP overhaul.

The early work that staff has brought forward appears promising. They do have good people working on this but remember the final decision rests with the mayor and six councillors.

Council will beging by hand-picking a 17-person task force. Information sessions to seek the public’s input are forthcoming.

It’s great that council is asking for the public’s input, but will they listen? That’s been a problem in the past.

Mayor Andrew Jakubeit believes that people’s visions have greatly changed over the past 15 years.

We’re not so sure. Overall, the ideology of the citizens in this community are in all likelihood the same.

Even with the most progressive cities, about 95 per cent of any OCP remains the same.

Committing $250,000 at a time when we’re told of a huge infrastructure debt, water mains are breaking, where council has already committed to several other big ticket items (revitalization of Main Street) and taxes are going up, now is not the time to spend another quarter-of-a-million dollars.

The best thing would have been for council to delay the OCP rewrite until 2019 when there’s a new council and, quite possibly, a new mayor.

This council has a dismal 21 per cent approval rating (Oraclepoll) from the public. Had recall legislation been in place, chances are they would have been recalled by now. People who have followed council for years can never remember a time that the mayor had to call council out and bring the police in to restore order.

To be blunt — but perfectly honest — the public has lost faith in this group of elected officials. People are fed up and they’re angry.

Yet they will be the ones who will take on the responsibility of writing the OCP that Penticton will follow for the next 10 years or longer.

Majority of the public has lost faith in council