Council broke the rules to approve building

Editor: Since the city decided to greenlight Tourism Kelowna’s takeover of public parkland, disappointment and anger has erupted.

Letters have complained the Queensway Jetty location in Kerry Park was the only one considered after council earlier rejected City Park as the site for a new tourist office.

No one has explained to the public why a Bernard Street location such as the old Paramount Theatre building, across from Kerry Park and currently under renovation, could not have worked. The amount of foot traffic is surely greater on Bernard than on the Jetty, and visitors already have their wallets pulled out, eager to spend.

Other letters have lamented the city’s failure to come clean on the public costs arising from its arrangement with Tourism Kelowna.

They say there has been no full cost and benefit disclosure for this project.

Some members of the public have said the fix was in. They’ve pointed to potential conflict-of-interest on the part of council members who’ve sat on Tourism Kelowna’s board in the past and continue to do so in the present.

They’ve said council’s interests have from the start of this project been indivisible from corporate interests, and that members of council have failed to meet their legal responsibility to give fair consideration to the public interest.

Such failure is clear in relation to the letters council received. Some 70 per cent were against the new tourist office being built at the proposed site. Up to 90 per cent of the letters to the editor were also opposed.

Although only 50 per cent of speakers at the public hearing spoke against the project, many opponents said they could not make their way into the overcrowded council chamber where people queued for an opportunity to speak.

If members of the community can’t get to a microphone to express their interests, it’s a sure thing council could not have taken them into account.

I made a presentation at the public hearing. I analyzed the city’s applications to rezone the Queensway parkland and re-designate it in the official community plan, and concluded their decisions were “illegal.”

Public hearings are unlike council meetings in that councillors must by law listen to all points of view and be willing to accept a persuasive presentation.

At the end of my presentation, Kelowna’s councillors did not care enough to even question me.

Let’s look at those zoning and OCP re-designations one by one.

Zoning Bylaw 8000 describes a land use that’s specific to Tourism Kelowna.

A market office is a kind of premises used for tourism-related administrative or promotional purposes by industry associations that include, but are not limited to, Tourism BC, Tourism Kelowna and the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association.

In the case of a tourist office such as Tourism Kelowna’s that intends to hold small events promoting the region, or mount cultural or historical exhibitions as part of destination marketing, a secondary related land use would be market community space.

This refers to the use of premises for activities, meetings, presentations, and informational open houses.

According to the bylaw, any non-governmental office must be located in a commercial zone or in an industrial or comprehensive development zone.

The OCP likewise expects to find commercial ventures that promote local tourism to be assigned to commercial zones.

But City Hall did not respect its own bylaws. Saying the principal land uses that applied to the tourist office were community recreation services, exhibition and convention facilities, government services, and private club, the parkland was zoned major institutional and re-designated educational/major institutional.

This would be laughable if it were not so outrageous. Tourism Kelowna is not a government entity and does not provide government services.

If Tourism Kelowna were a private club, its lease with the city would not be valid. The lease requires there to be public access to the building at all times.

Will city council now reverse its decision and observe their statutory obligation to respect their own bylaws? Will they finally listen to the people and rescind their approval of the applications? Will they acquiesce to the reasoning of the only councillor who voted against the applications? Charlie Hodge is worth quoting at length.

“You ask the people to vote for you because you want to be their messenger. I was on the fence which way to go, and at the end of the day when I had to make a decision, I prefer to go with the human factor rather than the financial one. The public made it very clear they were not happy. I’m not doing it for the popular vote. I just really believe we have a democratic process in municipal government. This is about our community, and our community said they did not think (Queensway Jetty) was the best place.” Dianne Varga, Penticton