Outright purchase the best solution

Dear Editor: As is commonly the case, when developers, either private or the city, finally leak a proposal, it is assumed that few choices are available, other than some minor variation of what those developers and City of Penticton have collaborated on. Take the proposed annexation of the Skaha Bluff property, for example.

The reality is there are other effective, reasonable, simple solutions to protecting the area and adding all 330 acres to Skaha Bluff Park. The simple option here is to have the province, or some combo of the province and city, purchase the property in question and add it to Skaha Bluff Park. The province should be involved, and they should offer most if not all of the purchase price, with local taxpayers contributing some percentage, say 10 per cent for the sake of negotiation.

The presence of housing would be a real and significant threat to the environmental integrity of the Bluffs, and it will simply aggravate the intense displacement and alienation of wildlife, specifically but not only bighorn sheep, now happening on a regular basis. Of course, housing will simply outright destroy habitat, which is a complicating and irreversible impact.

Obviously, a management plan that protects the bluffs first, and then, and only the, permits some human use on very specific trails and bluffs, needs to be in place.

The question of Penticton taxpayers contributing to the purchase price would be an appropriate referendum question on the ballot in the next municipal election, worded something like this: “Are you willing to have the city collect $10 from each taxable property for (aiding) the purchase of the property (define it) near Skaha Bluff Park in order that it be added to the Park?”

This is too important a change, and too critical a landscape, to have it rammed down taxpayers throats before the election by an impatient council and mayor who have shown a history of disregard for the overall interests of citizens.

Nothing complicated to overcome here, other than the COP — mayor, council and senior managers — ideological capture by developers and the destructive and failed “growth at all cost” mentality driving this scheme. The solution remains simple: purchase the property outright, leading to no housing development, and an expanded Skaha Bluff Park benefiting all regional Okanagan residents, with Penticton residents being the main beneficiaries.

Dr. Brian L. Horejsi

Penticton