City, I don’t want a free lunch

Some of us who have been opposing the City/Trio Agreements for nearly two years are now being invited to meet and eat with City personnel and parks planning people. Lunch is to be “on the house” at these meetings. Will I accept? Although a nice gesture, I can not forget the very not-nice things I saw in the summer of 2015 when the council publicly announced, at a public council meeting, that they would be entering a 39-year lease agreement with Trio Marina to commercialize Skaha Lake Park.

Regardless of the many reasons, objections and pleas from dozens of what looked like upright citizens, I saw a stoned-faced council and some City personnel staring blankly, back at the people. I could not help but wonder then, my first time at a council meeting, “Who are these people?”

Since that time I have several times seen the same defiant, disrespectful attitude and disregard towards hundreds of citizens who have voiced opposition to City proposals and actions.

Better than asking who they are, is to ask what is the force behind them? What is motivating them? Does the reader know the answer?

Waterslides never was the issue. A disregard for the value of “former ways and ideas,” and assuming their “right “to take public parks from the people, without seeking public approval, has always been the real offence.

But since then they have had their “foot in the door” and who knows what or who is doing the planning.

Have their designs on parks changed? I don’t see that. Therefore I am turning down a nice lunch with nice people who represent and cover for a council and City personnel such as they are. Hannah Hyland

Penticton