Master plan approved
City must now get public approval for park leases
After 2 1/2 years, the Parks and Recreation master plan steering committee is recommending more public oversight of park leases.
At a committee meeting Monday at City Hall, the board approved the parks master plan, an updated parks dedication bylaw and a parkland protection and use policy.
Anthony Haddad, director of development services with the city, said the committee has done good work over the past two years bringing new or updated regulations forward to city council.
The current process has requests for proposals occurring prior to consultation with the community, which Haddad noted was the case with the now defunct Skaha Lake Park proposal.
“There was a process gap there that we had in the past and no real guidance in place to allow that to occur,” Haddad said.
Under the newly proposed bylaw the city must “first obtain the approval of the electorate” prior to the lease of public parkland, the proposed bylaw states.
Board member Gary Denton told a packed gallery at city hall he’s confident the recommendations will pass. “It could be better, but it’s a lot better than it was a few years ago.”
The bylaw also lists all parks in the city included under the proposed regulations — which revealed some questions about current zonings, including LocoLanding Adventure Park.
Denton wrote one of the letters of support included in LocoLanding’s presentation to council asking for a 10-year lease extension at the last meeting and said he supports the use of the public land, but questioned why the lease proposal wasn’t brought to the committee.
“I believe the lease extension, any lease extension in a park, should be referred to the parks committee,” Denton said. “We’re in limbo right now. We don’t have a parks and recreation advisory committee.”
He said not referring the extension to the steering committee would be a mistake, but city staff pointed out the committee is not sitting in an advisory capacity until a new board is established.
Committee chairman Ron Ramsay said having LocoLanding out of the parks dedication bylaw would strengthen it.
“I would be in favour of excluding it, to be dealt with as its unique nature — really, it’s not a contentious issue in the community,” Ramsay said.
Committee community development representative, Adolf Steffen, former owner of LocoLanding and father of current owner Diana Stirling, said he didn’t think Monday’s meeting was a good time to talk about whether or not the park would be included in the bylaw.
“I cannot vote for the motion that’s on the table right now if after that motion is adopted we can’t discuss the lease extension with the city,” Steffen said. “It puts me in an awkward position.”
Penticton CAO Peter Weeber said the city will continue to make decisions prior to the establishment of an advisory committee or adoption of any bylaw or policy recommendations.
“The city must continue to do business. If we stopped doing business 2 1/2 years ago we’d have a bunch of angry customers,” said Weeber.
He said council is well within its rights to consider an investment like the $1.2 million upgrades proposed by LocoLanding dependent on the lease.
“The community and council’s mandate is to administer city properties and staff make recommendations. Once the advisory committee is in place the policy you created would be very clear on how things operate in the future,” Weeber said.
A new parkland protection and use policy, safeguarding public access and protecting public ownership of parkland was also passed by the committee and the master plan was adopted, with the addition of a rewritten executive summary to include the definition of parks as unencumbered land.
The committee’s recommendation are expected to come before council at the June 5 meeting.