Council makes right call on housing plan

All eyes of the development community were on Summerland, Tuesday, when council there rejected a seniors’ housing complex.

By a 5-2 vote, council denied an application to build five, six-storey buildings, totalling 415 units. Based on previous discussion at council, residents anticipated a 4-3 vote in favour.

Coun. Richard Barkwill seemed to have a last-minute epiphany and voted against the development.

Councillors Erin Carlson and Erin Trainer, who nobody was certain how they would vote, were opposed.

Mayor Peter Waterman and councillors Janet Peake, Toni Boot and Doug Holmes were predictable.

Density of the development, a loss of agricultural land, and opposition from the Freshwater Fisheries Society, which operates the trout hatchery, were among the reasons councillors gave in denying the request. A few observations: • Summerland CAO Linda Tynan did an admirable job during the two-year process. The public hearing was well organized, broken up into multiple meetings.

Speakers had their names posted on a screen for the benefit of the audience. The attendees were respectful and well-behaved.

• Developers The Lark Group didn’t seek to appreciate the power of residents in small communities. Small town folks take far more of an ownership in their community and they know the local councillors.

Many local residents who opposed the development were professionals in their own right — geotechnical engineers, professional fish biologist, geologists, environmentalists, and health professionals.

• Mayor Peter Waterman’s nearly 15-minute lecture, once it appeared the motion was going to be defeated, was about 13 minutes too long. Waterman and Coun. Janet Peake were the only two to vote in support.

This newspaper has a long history of being pro-development, but in this case, Summerland council made the correct decision. It was a magnificent idea, just the wrong location. There are more appropriate locations available in Summerland, albeit without the lake view.

The No. 1 issue is the trout hatchery. There was far too great a risk the fish hatchery would have been killed due to an inadequate source of clean water. An alternate source could not be found.

Had the development gone ahead, quite possibly there would have been considerable objection from First Nation communities.

What’s at stake by losing the fish hatchery?

The station in Summerland produces one million trout annually, which stocks 300 lakes across B.C. For every dollar spent to stock the lakes, anglers spend $25 in licences, equipment, food and lodging.

Trout fishing generates $100 million into B.C.’s economy annually.

That is a tremendous economic generator province-wide and would ultimately be more of a business win than this single development in Summerland.

Banks Crescent would have produced construction jobs, employment, taxation, and residents for Summerland, but it could have been at the expense of the rest of the province.

It wasn’t worth the risk.