Did Given and Blanleil originally vote in favour of appealing the court decision upholding the Simpson Covenant?

 

As Kelowna City Council has yet to pass a resolution to make public the vote held in August to appeal the decision of the BC Supreme Court to uphold the legality of the Simpson Covenant, it is fair game to make educated guesses on which councillors voted in favour of appealing that decision.

 

One piece of useful information in making such educated guesses is the responses to the questions asked of all the candidates by the Okanagan Mission Residents Association. When asked “Do you support the appeal of the Simpson/Sawmill Covenant decision by Madame Justice Catherine Bruce?” most candidates answered in a clear manner which would indicate that they either favoured the appeal or they didn’t. Here are the responses by Councillors Andre Blanleil and Brian Given:

 

Blanleil – “I think we need a public process to clarify land uses available to the City for the land in question. I think that land should be protected for Municipal purposes.”

 

Given – “I released a public statement calling for a resolution to this issue, and it will be coming to council on the public agenda Oct 27^th.”

 

Notice, neither candidate gave a direct response to the question but rather an answer that was already looking ahead to council’s decision on October 27 to abandon the appeal and to initiate a public consultation process. I think that it is also very telling that Given and Blanleil were the mover and seconder, respectively, of the motion at that council meeting that effectively abandoned the appeal. Was that their mea culpa?

City council’s decision to drop the Simpson Covenant appeal does not exonerate them

 

On September 27 Kelowna City Council voted to drop its planned appeal of the BC Supreme Court ruling upholding the Simpson Covenant and thereby reversed the decision that council made in August. In addition to voting to drop the appeal, Council decided to initiate a public consultation process and ask the public to help clarify the municipal purposes for which the former Simpson land could be used. There would also be a public referendum on the outcome of that process in 2011.

 

While most residents applaud council’s action on Monday, it is fair to ask some questions about what has just transpired. The first question is why was this done? Is this a genuine new-found respect on the part of some on council for historic agreements involving the City or, coming as it does less than three weeks before the civic election, an insincere and thinly veiled attempt by some councillors to avoid defeat at the polls? And were it not for the proximity of the election, would this have happened at all?

 

A second question is, if going to the public to clarify the allowable uses on the former Simpson land was an option all along, why wasn’t this option chosen in August instead of council’s decision at that time to pursue a court appeal? The third and most important question is, has anything really changed with our city council so that they are once again deserving of our trust? I think the answer to the last question is “no,” as I don’t think that there has been any fundamental transformation in the style or thinking of some councillors who are running for re-election regarding matters such as transparency of decision making and public involvement. They are still the same people, and I don’t believe that what happened this week is anything but an opportunistic attempt, as Sharron Simpson put it, “to protect their political assets.”

 

This council will continue to make decisions in-camera even though they have the choice not to. This council will continue to avoid involving the public directly in decision making. And this council will continue to be guided by political expedience rather than principle. Nothing has changed. This council is not deserving of our trust. And in order to allow the public to be able to separate the sheep from the goats, council should pass a resolution to make public how individual members of council voted in August on the original motion to appeal the court ruling on the Simpson Covenant. The public has the right to know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The presence of the Gospel Mission is the obstacle to the revitalization of the downtown

Daily Courier Managing Editor Tom Wilson asked in his editorial of October 21 for opponents to the Downtown Comprehensive Development Zone to propose an alternative plan for the redevelopment of the downtown. I cannot speak for all the opponents of CD 21 here but only for myself.

 

I acknowledge there is a need for redevelopment in the downtown but I don’t think the cause of its present state is due to a lack of density but rather to the concentration of social service agencies on Leon Avenue. In fact, at the top of a list of weaknesses of the downtown identified in the Spaxman report presented to Kelowna City Council in June 2007 is “The street activity generated by the Gospel Mission.” The key to the revitalization of the downtown then is the relocation of the Gospel Mission which was suggested in another report to council two years ago. City council accepted the recommendations of that report and even offered to give the Mission some city owned land to facilitate the relocation. However, city council never had the backbone to follow through with this plan and has since withdrawn the offer of land.

 

A new city council should make as a priority the relocation of the Gospel Mission. Once it is relocated, the concentration of social service agencies dispersed, and the nightclubs in the area better regulated, the obstacles to redevelopment will disappear and developers will once again be eager to commence with new projects in the city core. I reject the absurd notion that we need densities in excess of what is present in Vancouver and building heights of up to 27 storeys in order to achieve this revitalization. I think it can be accomplished using mid-rise buildings between 6 and 8 storeys which will still preserve the historic character of the downtown. In fact, anyone who has been to our downtown lately has noticed the recently completed and fine looking Worman Building at Pandosy Street and Leon Avenue which at a height of 6 storeys plus a penthouse is a welcome addition to the area. If developers need 27 storey buildings and ultra-high densities as an inducement to build there, no one told builder Shane Worman.

Simplistic solutions will result in disastrous outcomes

 “Build up, not out.” I could train a parrot to say that because it really doesn’t take much intelligence to spout that kind of simplistic rhetoric. Yet if you asked the parrot how high or dense, he wouldn’t be able to answer because that requires a lot more gray matter. Like our parrot, Michael Pitwirny of the Okanagan Sustainability Insitute (Kelowna Capital News, Oct. 17, 2008) also has a simplistic reason for advocating highrises — they save land. Yes, indeed they do, but what about all the other resources consumed by the occupants of those towers like water, energy, and the additional resources that support the high consumptive North American lifestyle? Will the occupants use less of those? Not likely. (Pitwirny should check his facts if he thinks that highrises units consume less energy than other housing types because they don’t!). Our ecological footprint includes all of the resources we consume and not just land.  With or without increased density it continues to grow beyond the capability of the environment to support our numbers  moving us further down the road to an environmental collapse; and the higher the density, the greater the size of our ecological footprint.

People like Pitwirny with their simplistic reasoning are really very dangerous types. They lull us into a false sense of security that all we have to do is densify and, voila, we will become sustainable while they distract us from the real cause of our unsustainability which is population growth. Simply put, the more people we have locally or globally, the more resources we consume, the more pollution we emit, and the more unsustainable we become. Densifying just reduces the consumption of one resource — land, and that’s all, and we pay a heavy price for that in terms of a decline in our livability. As Al Bartlett put it, densifying is like buying a first class ticket on the Titanic — the trip may be better but the outcome is still the same. And I’m sure that those first class passengers on the Titanic were also feeling very secure at the onset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electing nice people without knowledge or conviction doesn’t make for a good city council

I have had a look at the campaign statements and websites of my opponents for the position of city councillor and I am very disappointed by what I have seen. Although many of them are good people who are active in the community, most seem to be very weak on the issues and reluctant to take firm positions. Apart from the frequent spouting of simplistic “grow up, not out” slogans, they have no real vision. Almost all candidates support densification, but they seem to have no idea of how dense our urban centres should be. Should we build to a density of 20 units per acre, 50, 100, or 200? Should our maximum FAR (floor space to land area ratio) be 3.0, 5.0 or 9.0? Are higher densities always better or is there an optimal density after which further increases become counterproductive? I don’t think that most of my opponents have much knowledge of these matters. I doubt that most of them even know what FAR stands for, although that is a term that city planners frequently use when they bring development proposals before city council and that councillors have to be familiar with.  I think that voters should have a good look at the knowledge that these candidates will be bringing to the position as we may end up with a city council comprised of very nice people who don’t know a heck of a lot.

Kelowna City Council circumvents democracy yet again

I am appalled at the audacity of Kelowna City Council which by sending the matter of the downtown Comprehensive Development Zone to a public hearing on October 20 has signaled that it intends to make this monumental decision by itself during the short remainder of its term in office. Never mind that this council reflects the views of the electorate of three years ago and never mind that a council that reflects the current views of residents will be chosen in less than six weeks, the present city council thinks by virtue of its superior intellect and vision that it has the right to make this decision in the waning hours of its term.

 

Also never mind that our neighbouring communities of the Westside and Lake Country will be voting on referendums there, our all-seeing and all-knowing city council won’t be soiling itself by going to Kelowna residents for their opinion on the CD Zone in a referendum here. Our city council had decided some time ago that Kelownians don’t get to vote directly on matters of consequence like the Mission Aquatic Centre or the downtown CD Zone. Democracy is just a nuisance to these politicians who prefer to get it over with once every three years in order to get themselves elected, after which time they wash their hands of it and conveniently forget that the source of their power is the people. Then, during their term in office, they behave like total autocrats.

 

I am glad that Councillors Clark, Day, Gran and Letnick are not seeking re-election, but I am thinking that the remaining incumbents running for re-election are due for some serious humbling. Perhaps if Kelowna voters elected a new and all different city council, it would send a message to this bunch that, like the downtown CD Zone, they should not try to build their castles on unstable soil.

 

John Zeger for Kelowna City Council

REAL CHANGE for a Sustainable Kelowna

http://www.savekelowna.com

 

 

 

letter to Kelowna City Council on the downtown CD Zone (21)

Below is an e-mail that I sent to Kelowna’s mayor and city council regarding their initial consideration of the downtown Comprehensive Development Zone on October 6, 2008:

Dear Mayor Shepherd and Members of Council:

 

I have read the Planning Department’s report on the proposed downtown Comprehensive Development Zone and am sharing my concerns with you which lead me to conclude that not only is the CD Zone wrong for our city’s downtown but also that city council needs more information before sending this matter to a public hearing. I have itemized these concerns below:

 

Regarding the public consultation that has taken place, the Planning Department’s report fails to mention that the public survey the City conducted showed that nearly 50% of respondents didn’t want building heights taller than 14 storeys. Despite this finding, city staff went on to help design this plan in which most of the buildings are greater than 20 storeys. It is quite obvious that although the public was consulted here, its views were totally ignored!

The report mentions that the City has undertaken numerous initiatives to revitalize the downtown including “Gospel Mission relocation.” The Gospel Mission was never relocated!

       
The report mentions that “Sustainable development … will be the key element of the proposed CD zone.” I wish to comment that highrise buildings are not sustainable as they use more energy than any other type of housing on a per unit basis, a finding that is recognized by CMHC.

Regarding heritage, the submission by the Heritage Commission recognizes that important heritage structures will have to be gutted as a result of this development and that having only heritage building facades remaining is the lowest level of heritage conservation.

On the important subject of the relationship of the CD Zone to the Downtown Plan, the report cautions against adopting the CD Zone prior to revising the Downtown Plan saying “The proposed project and its relationship to other areas of Downtown will need to be addressed through a future revision of the Downtown Plan. … As the proposed CD zone would allow building heights in excess of the maximum allowable heights in the C7 zone, the expectation by the private sector could be that such heights are acceptable with the remainder of the Downtown. It is therefore possible that the proposed CD zone could have implications for the urban form of the Downtown outside the CD zone boundaries. The impacts of this have not yet been fully assessed or considered. The approval of the development in advance of considering the impacts on the rest of Downtown … could limit the options available for consideration at a later date.” Therefore, the City should revise the Downtown Plan prior to considering the CD zone.

The Kelowna Fire Department commented on the CD Zone proposal that “not enough information [was] provided” regarding fire safety within the CD zone area.

Fortis BC raised the subject of the need for a geotechnical study on soil conditions in the downtown prior to the development permit stage. This study should be done in advance of approving the rezoning!

The Works and Utilities Department noted that because downtown sewage lines are presently near capacity and that the increased density as a result of developing the CD zone will increase peak sewage flows beyond allowable levels, the City will have to spend $3,500,000 to upgrade the sewage system as it relates to the proposed CD zone.

For the above reasons, I do not think that City Council is justified in sending this matter to public hearing at this time.

 

Yours,

 John Zeger

 

 

JOHN ZEGER FOR KELOWNA CITY COUNCILLOR

WWW.SAVEKELOWNA.COM