What is city hall afraid of?

Editor:

Vote Connie Hodgkinson for Mayor! The headline (in the letter to the editor) suggested “Something really fishy going on in referendum.”

The truth is that the whole issue smells worse than a fish market on a hot day.

It has been rammed down our throats how necessary it is to have a civic centre, and city hall, in keeping with the West Kelowna’s relatively new status as a city.

The mayor and council are so fearful of losing this referendum that they found it necessary to spend $25,000 valuable dollars of tax payer’s money paying for a “Yes” office, a “Yes” committee and “Yes” signs all over the City. What are they so afraid of?

If it is true, as stated by Connie Hodgkinson, that in 2014 council finalized a contract with Strategic Develop-ment Group for this development, then it would explain most of the paranoia the city has shown over the prospect of losing the referendum vote. There can be no other explanation, because if it was such a good idea to build a civic centre at this time, there would be no need for a referendum or for the defence tactics being exhibited by the city.

We must ask ourselves, as I do daily, “what are they so afraid of?”

If council made a commitment to somebody, about something, without prior consensus from the taxpayers of West Kelowna then they should come clean and apologize for their transgression and establish a level playing field for a meaningful referendum result.

No matter what the result, it will always be questionable, in residents’ minds, why it was necessary to hold a referendum in the first place given that the initial borrowing proposal was previously defeated. David Simmons, Westbank