Lake Country council is puzzling

The headline on a Lake Country press release describes the proposed sale of publicly-owned waterfront land as a “win-win solution.” There are two problems to this imaginative wording. First, it’s only a win for private landowners eager to add lakeshore land to their property. Second, it’s a “solution” to a problem that Lake Country’s tone-deaf administration made for itself.

For reasons that defy comprehension, especially in an election year, Lake Country councillors seem determined to find a way to sell a long stretch of publiclyowned waterfront land in the community of Carr’s Landing.

It’s all the more baffling since not that long ago, Lake Country went to court to assert the public ownership of the lands in question. And the town’s opponents then were the very people to whom they’re now planning to sell the land.

Last year, when the idea first arose, the rationale was to raise money to repay part of Lake Country’s $2.6 million debt to the City of Kelowna. That’s on the books because Kelowna helped Lake Country buy its share of the abandoned Coldstream-to-downtown Kelowna railway that is now being turned into a long-distance recreation path.

It was a sweet deal for Lake Country because it came without any interest attached for the first few years, and no specified repayment schedule. But interest will soon kick in, and Lake Country officials, not unreasonably, want to get rid of this debt sooner than later.

But still. Selling publicly-owned waterfront land is the third rail of Okanagan politics. Touch it, and the citizens will fry you. Politicians with the Central Okanagan Regional District found this out in the ‘90s when they mused about selling lakeshore land in what was then known as Kelowna’s Westside.

Lake Country officials either didn’t know or didn’t care about these not-so-historical episodes when they dreamed up the idea of selling the publicly-owned waterfront land in Carr’s Landing.

Perhaps they vastly overestimated their powers of salesmanship, or underestimated the degree of attachment people who can’t afford to live on a lake feel to the water.

It’s an inconvenient fact for many lakeshore property owners, but in most places along the lakeshore there should be untrammelled public access between the high- and low-water marks. Big fences, imposing docks, retaining walls, and misleadingly placed Private Property signs are routinely used by waterfront landowners to try to thwart this public access.

Rather than simply reject the controversial sale of the Carr’s Landing public properties last December when they had a chance to do so, Lake Country council told staff to keep digging away on the idea. Now, the proposal is to sell the waterfront land, which the town says is surplus to requirements, and use the money to expand an existing waterfront park.

This still rankles because upland property owners, which is all but a tiny handful of us, expect our local governments to expand public access to the water in straightforward ways, not potentially diminish it through complicated swaps and deals and sales that may or may not be in the community interest.

Wherever they exist, publicly-owned waterfront lands in the Okanagan should be regarded as crown jewels to cherish, not treasuries to loot.

Ron Seymour is a Daily Courier reporter. Email: ron.seymour@ok.bc.ca