LEED Standards Watered Down by Kelowna City Council

It is regrettable that the original standards set for the Central Green project of LEED Gold construction and 20% affordable housing had to be watered down by Kelowna city council. The reason given was the expense of incorporating these features into the project and still giving developers an adequate return on their investment.

This brings me back to the series of open houses that were held prior to selecting a final design for the project. One of the original choices offered the public for this site was a series of four storey buildings equipped with solar-panelled roofs making them energy self-sufficient – a feature which practically by itself guaranteed a LEED Gold designation. As low-rise buildings can be constructed from wood, the cost of construction could have been kept down thereby affording a higher percentage of low-cost housing within the project. But instead of choosing the sensible option, the public backed one of the high-rise designs having been brainwashed for years by groups like Smart Growth BC, the Okanagan Partnership, and the Geography Department at UBCO that the highest residential densities were the most sustainable and these densities could only be achieved through high-rise construction.

Well, at this time I invite all those who participated in the Central Green open houses and selected the final high-rise option that was chosen on the grounds that they thought it would be the most sustainable to give themselves a cranial enema and wash out all the crap that they had heard before, because it is just that – garbage. High-rises are not, repeat NOT, more sustainable than four to six storey buildings no matter what various misguided people, some with very obvious connections to the development industry, tell them. And it is sad that the high standards originally set for the Central Green had to be lowered in order for them to learn this lesson.

Kelowna’s unemployment rate soars — city policy to blame

It was reported that Kelowna’s unemployment rate shot up in May to 11.5% being one of the highest among major Canadian cities and well above both the provincial and national rates of 7.6% and 8.4%, respectively. At 11.5% it is now above the pre-boom peak of 9.1% of 1991.

Mayor Sharon Shepherd attributes this leap in the number of unemployed to a sharp slowdown in building activity and the fact that about one in four jobs locally is related to the construction industry. So much for Economic Development Commission Chairman Robert Fine’s claim that the local economy has been successfully diversified. The truth is that it has become dangerously dependent on the construction sector in recent years as a result of Kelowna city council not putting controls on the pace of development and allowing the free market to determine our rate of growth. And whenever controls are foregone in favour of a laissez faire policy, rather than there being a moderate expansion, one can expect boom to be followed by bust.

However, the fallout from all this will not just be a personal problem for those who have lost their jobs but will be felt by the entire community. Sociologists universally agree that a rise in unemployment results in a higher crime rate and an increase in alcoholism, family breakdown, mental illness and suicide. And although a relatively small number have reaped most of the benefits of Kelowna’s boom, we will all be paying for the bust. As we watch the statistics that track social disorganization tick upwards in the weeks and months ahead, we should all remember those short-sighted men and women who have sat on city council for the past decade and have encouraged this to happen. If they have gotten any of the credit for the good times, they should receive their fair share of the blame for the bad.

27 storey highrise on Barnard Avenue approved by stealth

I am very disturbed by Kelowna City Council’s recent decision to approve the application for a 27 storey building (a 12 storey height addition on top of 15 storeys that were already allowable under the existing zoning) at the site owned by Aquilini Development on the 400 block of Bernard Avenue. It is preposterous to treat a proposal to increase the height of a building by 77 percent as a routine application for a height variance as if it was only an additional one or two storeys being requested, yet that is precisely what was done in this case.  What the developer did here was make an end run around the present Zoning Bylaw and Downtown Plan, and a complicit city planning department, Advisory Planning Commission, and city council let him do exactly that instead of requiring that changes be made to those two planning documents with the full consultation of the public. How easy it is to get your way if you are a developer in Kelowna, especially if you have greased the palm of several city councillors by contributing to their election campaigns!

 

By caving into this developer, our city council has managed to significantly change the character of the downtown in much the same way as the Downtown CD Zone (21) would have done by setting a new standard for building heights which every developer from here on in will be demanding for their own projects there. No less important than the CD Zone because of its character-changing impact, the Aquilini proposal in contrast hardly received any public scrutiny or opportunity for public comment. That the item was on the agenda at the April 7 city council meeting was unadvertised and unbeknownst to all except those who regularly read the agendas for future city council meetings on the city’s website. I would venture to guess that 99.9% of the public were thus unaware that they had the opportunity to address city council on this important application that evening.

 

Compounding the egregious nature of the offense was the way the meeting was conducted. With a full agenda and the Aquilini application being the next to last item, city council did not begin to hear presentations on that item until around midnight. Council had an option to adjourn the meeting at 11:00pm considering the lateness of the hour, but Councillor Charlie Hodge moved that council press on. After all, there were still development applications to approve and no one on council wanted to stand in the way of “progress” even if it meant that the public gallery would be empty. Consequently, council approved a precedent setting and city character-changing development that the public was largely unaware was coming before them that evening and at an hour when nearly every member of the public was absent. But that is the way that city council conducts its business in Kelowna and, unfortunately, gets away with it.

Graeme James — Kelowna’s saviour of agricultural land

When Kelowna City Councillor Graeme James ran as a candidate last fall on the issue of protecting agricultural land in the city, I thought he was creating a false issue as there are adequate protections in place to preserve agricultural land, specifically the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). How surprised I was then to learn that at a recent city council meeting at his first opportunity to rule on whether to continue to protect some viable agricultural land in the case of the Stober property on Dilworth Mountain that Councillor James voted to recommend to the Agricultural Land Commission that this property be removed from the ALR. So instead of carrying out his election promise, James here favoured developing some of the agricultural land that he campaigned to protect.

But then I never took his election grandstanding concerning protecting agricultural land seriously, knowing James to be another anything-goes-development type in which he neatly fills the empty shoes of Carol Gran and joins like-minded councillors Andre Blanleil and Brian Given on council. It can be seriously questioned whether James who essentially bought his seat on city council having spent over $16,500 in his election bid, which was more than five times the average amount spent by councillor candidates, would have won otherwise. But now that he has gotten his foot in the door, he will likely enjoy a long career on council as Kelowna voters being a timid lot by nature don’t like to throw out incumbents no matter how bad their performance might be. It seems that the electorate prefers the devil that they know on council rather than take a chance on change, the only problem being that as a result they usually end up with a lot of devils.

Home is where the heart is

I recently returned from an extended stay in San Diego County, California where I visited the cities of Encinitas and Carlsbad before concluding my travels with a trip to Santa Barbara in the central part of that state. Not unlike Kelowna, each of these cities is in an incredible natural setting with an abundance of beauty, but their urban planning and response to growth has been markedly different from that of our city.

Rather than capitulate to the mindless notion promoted by the development community and its allies in the city administration, the media and at UBC-O that growth is inevitable and that the only logical response is to channel growth to high density urban centres, each community has successfully controlled growth in its own way. Encinitas has limited the number of building permits issued annually, Carlsbad has required that adequate infrastructure and public services are in place before allowing growth to occur, and Santa Barbara has controlled growth by adhering to strict zoning regulations. Furthermore, each of these cities has imposed sensible building height restrictions and has said “no” to highrises.

As a result, each has retained its community character and quality of life while Kelowna is losing its. Encinitas, for example, has recently built a new library with a magnificent panoramaic view of the Pacific Ocean. At one time, one could enjoy a splendid view of the mountains to the east from Kelowna’s downtown library, but now you cannot see the mountains from there for all of the highrises in the way. The construction of highrises would never be permitted in activist-oriented Encinitas as the majority of the public there is concerned about the preservation of its community character. In apathetic Kelowna, the majority of the public doesn’t care enough to vote in a civic election.

In Santa Barbara there presently is a vigorous debate over building heights but not over raising them as one might expect, but rather of lowering allowable heights from the present limit of 60 feet to 45 feet as many feel that even allowing too many 60 foot buildings threatens their community character. Although tourism is an important industry in both Santa Barbara and Kelowna, in the former city the business community is supportive of strict restrictions on development because it realizes that preserving community character is in its best interests. In Kelowna, however, the business community is short-sighted and blinded by its greed unable to see that the construction of highrises along the lakefront will kill the golden goose of tourism.

I am deeply disappointed by the lack of concern in Kelowna for preserving its community character and quality of life as it marches on seemingly hell-bent on destroying its uniqueness and becoming just another generic city full of highrises. One can only blame politicians for so long before one has to point the finger at those self-serving or ignorant residents who keep re-electing the people who are responsible for this state of affairs or electing others who are basically no different from them.

I am looking forward to spending more time in the future in the cities of Encinitas, Carlsbad, and Santa Barbara as the values of its residents are closer to my own. And when I’m there, I will make sure to spend lots of my retirement dollars to help support business people who appreciate their community character and have taken steps to preserve it. Although I will continue to reside in Kelowna, if there is any truth in the adage “home is where the heart is,” then my real home is elsewhere

Voting at the malls — do your shopping and buy a Blanleil and a Given while you’re there

At its last meeting Kelowna City Council discussed reviving the idea of allowing voters to cast ballots at the malls. They better not leave out WalMart as a lot of residents go there too. And let’s also not forget places of recreation like golf courses. After all, people move to Kelowna for fun and leisure and not to get involved in community affairs, as I’ve been told by some such people myself.  Perhaps we can even have mobile units manned with election workers to make house calls for anyone who just doesn’t want to get off their duffs and go to a polling station. That should be a big hit with those who are too lazy or apathetic to leave their homes.

 

No, city council has come up with another clunker of an idea which will just treat the symptoms of the problem rather than the underlying cause, that being a general lack of interest of the populace in community affairs. Artificially boosting the voter turnout by making it even easier than it already is to cast a ballot won’t rejuvenate such interest and will only result in the election of candidates whose names have broad voter recognition like the incumbents. But perhaps that is why city council likes the idea.

 

To get to the cause of voter apathy would require an examination of the type of community that Kelowna has become in the past decade and why, and to take steps to rectify the problem. And that would be a much bigger task that just setting up a few more polling stations, and would require the admission that many mistakes in community building (or the lack thereof) have been made along the way. I doubt that even the new city council is up to that task as it mostly shares the same old thinking of previous councils on matters such as growth and development.  No, failing taking some radical steps i.e., getting to the root of the problem, council should just leave things as they are which is that those people who care enough about their community to make the effort to travel about three blocks to the nearest polling station get to choose its political representatives.

Good riddance to arrogance i.e., Barrie Clark, Colin Day, Carol Gran and Norm Letnick

Outgoing city councillor Barrie Clark, expressed his displeasure in the Capital News on the possibility that the new city council could vote against the downtown CD Zone on fourth and final reading saying “To totally defy the work of the predecessor that’s been going on for two years and to just blatantly cut that off now, I think would be a tragedy for Kelowna.” Fellow out-going councillor Colin Day had made similar remarks earlier suggesting that the prospect of the new council taking such action was unprecedented.

 

Well, these two retiring councillors should have thought of that before voting to give the CD Zone second and third reading. City council had the option at that time of leaving the matter for the new city council which was going to take office is just a few weeks to decide, but no, they wanted to make the decision themselves right then and there before allowing the voters of Kelowna to democratically choose a new city council which might have a different take on the matter. Clark, Day, Carol Gran, and Norm Letnick, who each voted in favour of the CD Zone, all decided not to run for re-election with Carol Gran leaving town shortly after that vote was taken. I would just like to say good riddance to this group of four. You will be remembered for your arrogance and you will not be missed.

 

 

 

Our new city council

I want to congratulate all the winners in the civic election especially Angela Reid and Charlie Hodge who’s presence bodes well for the new city council to be more progressive than the last.

I have already commented on my dissapointment at the low voter turnout, a drop of 35% from 2005. With that large difference from the last election in the number of eligible voters who actually voted, it is difficult to make comparisons of the candidates’ showing on the basis of the actual number of votes they received. However, among all the candidates who ran both three years ago and this year, only Graeme James and I had an increase in the number of votes cast for them.  All other candidates experienced a drop in votes with the incumbents suffering the largest decline (Robert Hobson -5068, Andre Blanleil -5043, Brian Given -4027, and Michelle Rule -2371).  It is probably most meaningful to compare candidates on their percentage of the total vote. There Graham James fared the best with a gain of 80.3%, I came in second with an increase of 61.8%, Joe Gates gained 36.6%, Mary-Ann Graham picked up 18.2% and Charlie Hodge advanced 10.8%.  The incumbents all had a decline. Lastly, I want to congratulate the first time candidates such as Kevin Craig and Toby Pike on their strong showing.

Kelowna civic election — the big winner is apathy

Apathy was the big winner in the Kelowna civic election. With only one out of five eligible voters bothering to cast a ballot and many important issues still to be decided like the downtown CD Zone and the new Official Community Plan, it seems like the majority of residents just don’t care. But this is largely the consequence of the kind of community that Kelowna city council has fostered in the past decade. They have turned Kelowna into a retirement haven for the wealthy where people come to live out the last ten or twenty years of their lives without any interest in the community beyond that time frame.

Mayor Sharon Shepherd says the problem is the way we vote and suggests that a modified ward system will spur residents to become more interested in their community. But the only kind of interest that will encourage is an unhealthy and insular “my neighbourhood first” mentality which is already a rot in our body politic. No, there is no way to organize apathy. It has to be cut out like a cancer if it hasn’t spread too far, but it looks like it may already be too late and that the patient is terminal.

Letter of support

IN SUPPORT OF

J O H N   Z E G E R

For Kelowna City Councillor

 

In my opinion, over the past 34 years, the Citizens of the City of Kelowna were most fortunate to have had a variety of outstanding, dedicated, committed individuals Elected the Office of City Mayor and Councillor.  Some of these individuals were outstanding in the achievements that were accomplished.  These people have spent many hours of their own personal time, well over and above the expected normal time spent, attending meetings, committees, meeting with the concerns of Kelowna Citizens, etc., all on behalf of the quality of life of the Citizens of Kelowna.  Existing Mayor Sharon Shepherd is outstanding too and I hope that she will be our Mayor for many years into the future.  I thank these individuals for their contribution.

 

We have now reached a point in time, where change and major re-focus is needed on the City Council and with the direction the City of Kelowna will follow.  It’s time for a major change in thinking and planning of Kelowna’s Future !  We now have a good Mayor and we now need a good Council, a Council that will work together as a Team, who will build back the respect of the Citizen’s of Kelowna and who will give the necessary direction to the City of Kelowna Administration Staff.

 

*    The Community Spirit of Kelowna Resident’s that was so outstanding during the era as a smaller community, was respected by all age groups of the entire community. This type of Community Spirt has rapidly eroded and has been discontinued and replaced by current Council thinking that does not have a focus on the quality and lifestyle of the majority of Long Time Residents/Average Families, Seniors and the Young, the roots, that built this community. Kelowna Citizens that want their concerns brought to a Public Council Meeting should have their business placed first on the agenda and not have to wait until the end of these meetings.  Council should exercise full democracy. 

 

*    Population Growth is Now Rampant.

    The City of Kelowna can no longer properly plan and budget Municipal Infastructure, including road maintenance, service maintenance/up-grading improvements to existinh established neighbourhoods and many similar needs, without large Property Tax Increases.  With the Rampant Growth, Police and Fire Staffing Resources, City Employees are being strained.  Many Service Requirements, are put on hold, but actually need to be expanded.  Affordable Housing is being poorly handled, with little results accomplished.  Many Residents no longer feel safe on the streets at night with the crime.  Traffic flow through the City is in sad condition.  Agricultural land needs to be preserved. New Industry is required in Kelowna, Including Employment and Jobs.

It is important for the City of Kelowna to build it’s Tourism for All Seasons of the Year, which helps to generate good cash flow to the Hospitality Industry and subsequently builds Employment and Jobs too.

*    The Simpson Covenant was poorly and disrespectfully handled by the previous council in conducting this type of City Business behind closed doors.  We need a new council that will be transparent to the Citizens of Kelowna and demonstrate respect, to this major contribution made by the Simpson Family.

 

*    Downtown Comprehensive Development Zone. 

    A very important matter to all residents of the City of Kelowna, which was rushed through City Council and was not givem adequate time for the Citizens to digest.  Recommend this import business be delayed, put on-hold for up to 5 years, to allow input from the entire community and that only local Architects and Planners be used.  Not handled by City Council in a very Democratic manner.

Recommend this matter be presented to the Citizens of Kelowna in the form of Referendum in the Fall of 2012 or Spring 2013.

 

*    Okanagan Mission Sports Centre & Swimming Pool.

    These recreational facilities were badly needed in this section of the community, but the approach taken by City Council is another example of not having the costs and design building these facilities included in a Referendum, for the Citizens of Kelowna to make the decision.  The approach take was not Democratic.  Further municipal facilities should be included into a Full Referendum Process for the Citizens of Kelowna to make the decision.

Perhaps the B.C. Municipal Act should be amended too to remove the Alternate Approval Process?

TOURISM & COMMUNITY  LIFESTYLE

*    Annual Kelowna Regatta & Parade. 

    This event was downsized due to past problems with riots in the downtown area, mainly as a result of the sale and consumption of alcohol in the City Park.  Hopefully lessions were learned from mistakes and corrections can be made to restore the Regatta to it’s original status.

The Kelowna Regatta was famous in the past throughout the entire Province of B.C. and brought Tourists into Kelowna with a magnitude.  It is unfortunate that the old original old Aquadic/Regatta Building in the City Park, burned down and was not rebuilt. This old Acquadic Centre was outstanding for centralizing Water Sports  We understand that the Insurance Coverage Claim  for the Old Acquadic Building was not adequate and that these funds were contributed towards the Construction of the Parkinsons Recreation Centre.  Not the same for Kelowna.

Hopefully the Regatta can have a full time year around office to centralize and to promote tourism.  Hopefully this could be included in the pending New Kelowna Yacht Club Building.  It would be great if the Regatta were turned over to the Jaycees with their skill in these areas ?

*    The Wake Festival.

    The Wake Festival was discontinued by the current City Council, in their wisdom due to problems and concerns. We understand the City Council will be giving the Wake Festival further consideration and hopefully can be reinstated for next year ?

*    Children’s Fat Cat Festival.

    Hopefully this too can be revived, as it was successfull from day one.

 

Vote for  John Zeger

IT’S  TIME  FOR  A  CHANGE

As a resident in Kelowna since 1974, I have voted in every Municipal Election.  Over the years we have seen a number of New Mayors and Councils come and go.  Some good, some not so good.

I am supporting  “JOHN ZEGER”  as a candidate for City of Kelowna Councillor and encourage you to do the same.  “JOHN ZEGER” has an Outstanding Background, including leadership skills and I know that he will be an Excellant Hard Working Team Player and Spokesman on the New Council, for all of the Citizens of Kelowna and for every area of the City of Kelowna. 

 

Don Mortison,

Okanagan Mission,

Kelowna,  B.C.