Enough with burdening taxpayers

Dear editor: I’m writing in response to recent letters suggesting the city consider charging developers a Community Amenity Contribution in order to pay for park construction.

This came up during a recent meeting of the KLO Neighbourhood Association as part of the ongoing desire to create a park out of city-owned waterfront properties near Cedar Avenue.

While I’m all for more parkland being developed, especially on the waterfront, I have to question the wisdom of adding more cost to housing in Kelowna.

We already have a rental vacancy rate of 0.2 per cent — the lowest in Canada — with some of the highest rental rates in the country (about $1,600 for a two bedroom apartment).

And the recently released City of Kelowna Healthy Housing Strategy found that 73 per cent of new households in Kelowna from 20112016 were rentals.

Any additional costs we put on developers will get passed on to renters (or owners in the form of higher mortgage payments), making Kelowna even less affordable. The has to be another way. The Cedar Avenue park (dubbed the South Pandosy Waterfront Park in the city’s 10-year capital plan) is projected to cost $1.7 million to fully develop. That work, scheduled for 2027, can only be done sooner if the money comes from the community. Various plans have been put forward over the years, including selling some of the land to cover the cost of developing the rest. The latest suggestion was for the neighbourhood association to raise all the money on its own.

Do we really need a $1.7 million park? We have a number of street end waterfront parks. Could we not start on a smaller scale by demolishing just one or two of the houses the city owns and create a smaller, more cost effective, less developed park?

In fact, Robert Parlane, manager for Parks and Buildings Planning for the city, told me in an email the city did offer a cheaper option of demolishing just four houses.

That was rejected by the neighbourhood association.

While council needs to have a serious look at its parks development policies, standards and priorities, putting the burden on developers will just add to the already outrageously high price of housing in Kelowna.