Long-time councillor reflects on generation of politics
Katie Robinson watched a large chapter of Penticton’s history unfold during her tenure as a Penticton city councillor –- she was first elected before the MC Hammer concert, and served until the rollout of separated bike lanes.
Robinson started to get political around 35 years ago as a result of her experience volunteering for the Peach Festival.
“When I took over as president I got a box with some old posters in it –- there was no financial records, no list of what went on -it was crazy.”
Then she learned there was no annual operating budget -money had to be requested from council every year.
“So it’s run by volunteers and the City’s not funding it?” she asked the team.
With a background in financial planning, that didn’t sit right with Robinson. So her first order of business at City Hall was as a volunteer, lobbying on behalf of PeachFest for a steady stream of funding.
The request for an annual stream of funding was successful. Shortly afterwards, she was elected in the 1990 civic election.
Her first PeachFest as a city councillor -- in 1991 -- is easy to remember because there was an MC Hammer concert happening simultaneously. She and her family were at the show.
“We took our kids down to Kings Park, watched the concert and walked home to where we lived near Winnipeg (Street) and Eckhardt (Avenue),” she said, adding that they stayed til the end. “And everything was quiet when I went to bed.”
There was quite a commotion in other parts of the city.
“I remember my husband waking me up and saying, ‘Katie there was a riot last night,’ and I said ‘don’t be ridiculous.’”
But sure enough, there really was a riot, and a message on their answering machine had summoned her to City Hall for an emergency meeting. It was starting in a few minutes.
“I remember coming out the back alley in my car driving down Main Street, seeing what had happened and it was just devastating to see all the broken windows.”
Although the riot happened during PeachFest, and famously resulted in the destruction of the original Penticton Peach, Robinson doesn’t feel like it reflected poorly on the festival.
However, that prompted council to discourage violence by launching the “Be a good sport” campaign the following year, and she remembers that being contentious.
“Everybody just wanted to put it behind them.”
While there was some blowback about vehicles getting stopped on their way into town, Robinson thinks there would have been less criticism if people could see how baseball bats and batons were being confiscated.
“Things that are going to hurt people. That was a real eye-opener for me. We just wanted to say, have a great time at PeachFest, but please party responsibly.”
Responsible party planning is why two decades later, she was skeptical about the plan to host Boonstock 2014 in Penticton.
And in hindsight, that event was not planned very well -- the security company bailed, tickets were priced assuming there would be a liquor license (denied), and a 23-year old woman died of an overdose.
Organizers ended up claiming bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers to foot a six-figure RCMP bill. Several contractors weren’t paid.
Robinson didn’t get much sleep that weekend.
“Our hospital ran out of rape kits, that really affected me hard. That’s pretty serious when Interior Health has to bring in an extra trailer to deal with things.”
She was skeptical before the weekend started, having contacted a county councillor from Gibbons, Alberta, where Boonstock operated for seven years before getting booted out.
“When the death hit with that young girl, my lack of sleep and the fact that I tried to warn everybody with the information that I had going into it…”
During a council meeting, the day after the festival, she found herself in a heated exchange with James Miller, the editor of this newspaper. When asked why she didn’t attend, she said something to the effect of “because I’m not a head-banging druggie.”
“Then I stopped halfway through what I was saying because I was aghast that it was going out of my mouth,” she said. “I was a seasoned politician by that time and should have known to keep my mouth shut, but it came out involuntarily. And I apologized the next day.”
None of her spite was directed towards festival-goers.
“I was actually taking my frustration out on James.”
Nevertheless, some locals took offence to Robinson’s comment. There were many letters to the editor about it and “head-banging druggie” T-shirts were created in protest.
Her commentary about illicit substances wasn’t always met with scorn. Seven years later, in 2021, the City found itself feuding with the province over a homeless shelter at Victory Church, as it was being kept open against the wishes of council.
“It’s very frustrating when someone else is telling you what to do in your own town.”
And while it was a contentious issue, the public did not get defensive when Robinson described it as “a legalized drug den.”
To address the challenges related to severe addiction, she wishes provincial and federal governments would provide better access to treatment for addiction, and questions the logic behind the “safe supply” strategy of prescribing opioids and stimulants to recreational users.
Robinson feels like local politics wasn’t so bleak when she was first elected. In the beginning, councils mostly focused on the basics -- roads, sewers, waste, drinking water.
More recently, the province declared an opioid crisis in 2016. Since then, the number of drug poisoning deaths in B.C. has increased from 995 in 2016 to 2,511 in 2023. Simultaneously there was a steep increase in the cost of housing. Like many other communities across the province, Penticton became overwhelmed by the influx of extreme poverty.
“I didn’t sign up to be a social worker. I have the utmost respect for them and the need is great, but it’s not my job and that’s all we deal with now.”
But despite the complexity of modern problems, Robinson said one her favourite councils was the one she served on most recently, from 2018 to 2022 led by then mayor John Vassilaki.
“Everyone on it was older, a little more mature. We’d been around the block a few times -there are few things in this world that are really new.”
Conversely, Robinson remembers not always seeing eye-toeye between 1996 and 1999, when Beth Campbell was mayor. A major point of contention was over taxes -- Robinson wanted them raised modestly, while Campbell didn’t want to raise them at all.
“Beth and I used to fight all the time like cats and dogs, but always respected each others opinions. You don’t have to agree with somebody to respect the fact that they have a different opinion than yours. Just like Boonstock -- people had different opinions than me, I didn’t think their opinions were wrong, I just thought a different way.”
Robinson appreciates the level of professionalism that’s maintained at the local level, and also regional (she was also a director for the RDOS).
“We all live in our communities as neighbours and have a deep respect and passion for our community’s well-being and quality of life. It is also the level of government which is the most accountable to the public.”
She feels proud to have been part of the team that oversaw the construction of a new water filtration plant and the Point Intersection. She regrets not being able to initiate an organic waste facility at the Campbell Mountain Landfill.
Among all of the issues to flare up during Robinson’s years on council, she says the Lake-toLake Cycling Route will go down as the most controversial.
That caught her off guard -she didn’t expect a bike lane to become so divisive in a city that hosts Ironman Canada.
“People just got into this catfight about whether we should have bike lanes or not.”
Perhaps the southern portion shouldn’t have been built along Martin Street, she said, but it was an important investment.
“If you’re trying to reduce carbon emissions, there’s only one way of doing that -- that means you don’t get into a car. Well if you don’t get into a car, you’ve got two choices: bike or walk.”
She believes the decision to build the bike lanes will be easier to appreciate as time goes on. The project isn’t even finished yet.
One decision that won’t age well, she believes, is the province’s new density requirements, allowing developers to build more units on each lot without having to rezone.
“Although it may be a good plan for large cities like Vancouver, I fear it may destroy small towns, opening the floodgates to overdevelopment and parking nightmares. I always worked hard to protect neighbourhood identities through public involvement and consultation and now the provincial government wants to throw it all out.”
The new rules jeopardize Official Community Plans and each community’s collective vision.
“Building fourplexes on single residential properties anywhere you want is a blueprint for disaster. I have no problem with rental suites and carriage houses to solve density issues, but we shouldn’t overreact to the housing crisis by risking our quality of life and environmental concerns with poorly thought out planning.”