Private property sign on parkade doesn’t tell truth

Editor: Recently, I was walking along Ellis Street admiring the sparkling new and shiny Memorial parkade building.

Despite the fact that it was only completed six months behind schedule, the 139 public access stalls are a nice addition to the city core.

Admiring the building, my attention was drawn to signage on the structure identifying it as “Private Property.”

I found the signage interesting, considering that the building is indeed “public” on “public” land and financed by the “public.”

I found this even more interesting considering the land upon which the parkade is built, is a portion of the Simpson covenant lands.

As a good citizen, I wrote mayor and council to query how they would permit signage of a “public” building to be posted as “private property.” The response from Mayor Colin Basran was astounding.

Basran wrote back that the building, and in fact all city parking structures, are posted as “private property” to enable “enforcement of the Trespass Act, if required” to remove undesirables, such as skateboarders, from the property.

The mayor further advised that it is a tool that “enforcement partners need the ability to deal with issues as they encounter them.”

The mayor went on to advise that unfortunately, the city experiences a range of undesirable activities in city facilities from drinking to graffiti and drug use. The mayor and council know full well that the building is public property, not private.

The response from the mayor really begs the question of, what other signage or other public information is provided to the public courtesy of mayor and council that is blatantly false?

Are other activities and information distributed by mayor and council for such devious purposes of scare tactics or worse, attempting to facilitate bogus criminal charges upon hardened criminals, such as skateboarders? Can we the public trust our locally elected politicians to be fair, honest and transparent?

The mayor is right in one regard though. There are undesirable activities taking place in city facilities. Perhaps the most undesirable activities are taking place behind the security doors on the upper levels of City Hall.

The old saying holds true “don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house’ and there are a lot of windows in the mayor’s office.

If mayor and council are going to sanction blatant false information release to the public and that same public is looking to them for guidance, virtue and morality, don’t be surprised that what they give is what they get. Jim McMullan, Kelowna