Protest outside City Hall
Demonstrators picketed outside Penticton City Hall, Wednesday morning, prior to a Parks and Recreation Master Plan Steering committee meeting. The group does not want commercialization in City parks. Vancouver’s beloved seawall and its English Bay beaches.
In Kelowna, from the Bennett Bridge up to Rotary Marsh, we have a good template for what we could eventually do with our shoreline on the other side of the bridge down to Mission Creek.
Within this roughly five kilometres of shore south of the bridge, we now have a few small- to medium-size parks. Unfortunately, they are disconnected from one another by long rows of waterfront houses.
In many locations, the owners of these houses have erected illegal barriers near the water. These barriers prevent us from walking from park to park along the shore of the lake that we all collectively own.
The most common barriers on our†shoreline are private docks, built on public land.
Most of them do not have the legally required stairs on both sides that allow you to climb over them. Adding the stairs, or other means to walk over these docks, should be the minimum required.
Ideally, the province will eventually decrease the number of docks by refusing permits for new and replacement ones, and not renewing the permits when properties are sold.
B.C.’s Natural Resource Officers have many important responsibilities. One of these is enforcing the laws that enable public access to our foreshore.
For decades, that has rarely been done in Kelowna.
Because the province largely ignored infractions, many lakefront property owners erected more and more illegal barriers. One reason given by B.C. as to why it disregards these provincial laws is that there are insufficient funds available to hire enough officers.
A simple and effective solution, that would not result in more taxation, would be to drastically increase fines to offenders and to then funnel this money into paying for more NROs.
When B.C. politicians start asking for your vote in the May 9 provincial election, please ask them to:
1. Commit to hiring more Natural Resource Officers to enforce the existing laws, and
2. Open up public access to our Okanagan Lake by decreasing the number of private docks. Al Janusas PLANKelowna available.
Eventually, the responsible fiscal actions of the BC Liberal government saw sufficient money — $45 million — become available to greatly improve the road in 2014. Improvements are in full swing today, scheduled for completion in 2019.
This government plans. They work with people in their own ministries and in the public, looking at lasting, longterm benefits and ensuring jobs are created. They work to make money available for things needed for the people of B.C.
Even today as announcements are being made, we can all be confident that every project has been well considered and planned in a way to benefit the province of B.C. Peter Wannop West Kelowna