Time, place set for special meeting

Thursday’s special city council meeting to discuss a $5-million policing proposal is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. without the public in attendance.

The meeting was called by Penticton Mayor John Vassilaki, who is recommending council pass a motion to “immediately approve five more RCMP officers and request that they be deployed as soon as possible."

The plan was put forward earlier this month by Rick Thorpe, a former provincial cabinet minister and Okanagan MLA, who suggested the city pull $5 million from reserves to fund the five new Mounties for five years without raising taxes.

The proceedings will be live-streamed on the city’s website with an opportunity for the public ask questions afterwards via phone or the Zoom videoconferencing service.

While council meetings officially reopened to in-person attendance earlier this month, council chambers is in the midst of an audio-visual upgrade and “given the short-notice cost of setting up a meeting at the (Penticton Trade and Convention Centre), returning to Zoom for this special meeting was deemed the most feasible solution,” city spokesman Philip Cooper said in an email Tuesday.

Community safety is one of three strategic priorities of city council, which approved hiring two new Mounties — who will lift the detachment’s staff complement to 50 members — as part of its 2021 budget process, although boots aren’t expected to be on the ground until 2022.

In 2019 — the most recent year for which data is publicly available from the B.C. government — each Mountie in Penticton had an average caseload of 170 files. That was by far the most of any detachment in a B.C. community with a population over 15,000; the next highest was Prince George at 134.