City hall doesn’t listen to the people

Editor: The City of Vancouver recently acted like our City of Penticton.

Vancouver tried to railroad through a deal to replace the city logo with some plain, lacklustre logo that would have cost $8,000 initially. The change was approved by council without any consultation with the public or area designers.

Vancouver proposed it as an in-house deal. No tenders were issued. The new logo just read City of Vancouver.

There were two colours: blue and green. There were no graphics of any kind. It isn’t the $8,000 that others objected to. It was how it was done initially. It would have meant approximately $175,000 more dollars to update city stationery, city vehicles, special signage, etc.

Does this sound familiar? It sounds like Penticton, doesn’t it? The premise here is go ahead and do something and beg for forgiveness later.

Of course, I am referring to the Skaha Park/Trio fiasco and more recently, the proposed forthcoming parking changes.

Does anyone recall any real attempts to enlighten the electorate as to the game plan for parking? If there was, I must have missed it.

Nowhere was the outline of this expansion parking program spelled out in detail that I am aware of. I don’t recall any public hearings.

It is interesting that Penticton has recently scaled back (ever so slightly) the proposed increase to our taxes. Is this to detract from the fact that they are going ahead with the parking issue?

Perhaps, Penticton could take the modest tax reduction and go to Cole’s Books and invest in a good Oxford Dictionary and look up the words transparency and accountability.

Evidently, the city doesn’t seem to think they exist, let alone what they mean.

Looking at the proposed parking plan makes one wonder. There are some relevant questions to be asked to which there should be some straight answers.

One of these is the fact that there will be a cost for equipment (i.e. meters or pay stations). I guess that we are paying for that whether we want to or not. Another question is how much real revenue can Penticton realize by privatizing the operation and maintenance of parking? How cost effective can this be?

It is apparent Penticton wants to hold citizens and tourists for ransom with additional paid parking. Hopefully, this increased revenue will offset some of the recent hiring costs.

Stay tuned folks, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Ron Barillaro, Penticton