School trustee argues for 2nd seat for West Kelowna
Rolli Cacchioni to suggest changes to electoral boundaries at tonight’s meeting of school board
Six years after changes to electoral boundaries in the Central Okanagan school district were finalized, one trustee is reigniting the debate. Kelowna trustee Rolli Cacchioni is putting forward two motions at tonight’s board meeting that involve either combining the City of West Kelowna electoral zone with Zone 2, including Peachland, Central Okanagan West electoral area and the Westbank First Nation, and having both trustees represent the entire Westside, or expanding the board of trustees to nine from seven by adding one trustee for the City of West Kelowna and one for the City of Kelowna.
Having two trustees represent all of the Westside would create more equality, said Cacchioni.
“Currently, one seat represents about 15,000 people (in Zone 2) and the other seat in the City of West Kelowna represents around 34,000 people, so there’s a bit of a disparity there,” he said. “When people vote, they want to feel their vote counts.”
Cacchioni said that in bringing forward the motions to change the electoral boundaries, he is following up on requests by West Kelowna council and Mayor Doug Findlater, who is in favour of combining both Westside electoral areas into one.
“All the schools on the Westside function as a unit,” said Findlater. “All the elementary schools from Rose Valley and Mar Jok south to Glenrosa and Peachland all feed into one or the other of the two middle schools, and those schools feed into the one high school at Mount Boucherie. We feel it would be more equitable if both trustees would represent all the folks on the Westside.”
West Kelowna trustee Julia Fraser is opposed to changing the electoral boundaries. She said voters prefer having a designated trustee to represent their area and their specific needs.
“It’s not just about numbers. It’s about being able to contact someone and relying on them to follow up with the information that’s required,” she said. “For example, the people that live in Smith Creek, Shannon Lake, Rose Valley, Lakeview Heights, they all know if they have issues, questions, if they need further information on how to deal with a situation that has arisen, and they don’t feel like they’re getting satisfaction dealing with their principal, they usually phone me because they know I’m a locally elected school trustee in this community.”
Combining the two Westside electoral areas into one would not take away from that accountability, said Findlater.
“My point would be all those folks would have two trustees advocating for them,” he said.
Instead, Fraser said she would like to see a slight redistribution of the seven trustees.
“What we could do is redistribute so there would be two (trustees) in West Kelowna, one in Peachland (Zone 2), one in Lake Country and three in Kelowna,” she said.
Currently, there are four trustees in Kelowna, one in West Kelowna, one in Zone 2 and one in Lake Country.
The last electoral boundary review began in 2008 and was finalized in 2011.
“It is always an interesting discussion,” said board chair Moyra Baxter, a trustee representing Zone 2. “It’s a very serious thing to change electoral boundaries.”