Selected Morning Star Newsclips - In case you missed them.

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Coldstream Committee of the Whole Meeting - March 6, 2017

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Selected Morning Star Newsclips - In case you missed them.

 

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Latest news on Greater Vernon Advisory Committee!

Further to my earlier comments on GVAC issues here are the newest developments:

Above are the recently re-discovered Terms of Reference for the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee. As it turns out we have been carrying on business in contradiction of that Terms of Reference. Only two people were eligible to be on the GVAC and the RDNO Board of Directors. In Coldstreams' case it was only the appointed Director and his Alternate could sit on both bodies. Thus, effective today I am out of a job as the Director on GVAC and am only appointed as an alternate, in case the two appointees are not able to attend.

It appears that only Coldstream is affected by this strange rule. Four members of Vernon Council are eligible for Directors of RDNO each of whom are eligible for directorship on GVAC.

Another wrinkle of the RDNO rules is that neither the RDNO Director nor his alternate can advise Coldstream Council of any discussions or decisions made in camera at the RDNO in-camera meetings unless specifically authorized by the Board. 

So as a result of these rules I am afraid I cannot represent your interests on the GVAC. I can sit in at the meetings but I cannot vote unless one of the two Directors are absent.

I wanted to let all of you know before you hear it from the Media. I guess it is fair from RDNO's point of view but I am not so sure it is fair for Coldstream. It all depends on whose ox is being gored!

Cheers!

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Cosens Bay Residents Clarify Road

Written by Glen Morrison Friday, 18 July 2014 06:00 

 

A residents' spokesman in Cosens Bay says their push isn't for a wider road, but for safety.

Brent Hauberg says the existing road through Kal Lake Provincial Park does not meet either Parks or Ministry of Transportation standards.

He says "M.O.T. has even been in discussion with the contractors that maintain the road because the road does not meet the minimum requirements for their maintenance vehicles to even be on the road to maintain it."

Hauberg says the 30 meter width wouldn't be for the road way itself, but would rather allow corners to be straightened and drainage issues solved, leaving the roadway at the same width it is now.

He says the Transport Ministry will be publishing a notice of an open house, likely this month.

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Excerpts from the Cosens Bay Road lawsuit!

Further to my earlier blog here a couple excerpts regarding road width as contemplated by the Judge and the final Decision.

6. IS COSENS BAY ROAD A HIGHWAY?

1. Exercise of powers under s.8 of the Highway Act, supra

LVI.            With respect to the exercise of ministerial powers, the 1911 statute provided:

    8.    It shall be lawful for the Minister, in his absolute discretion, to make public highways of any width not exceeding sixty-six feet, and to vary and alter any existing roads, and to declare the same by a notice in the Gazette, setting forth the direction and extent of such highway; and for such purpose, by himself, his agents, servants, and workmen, without any notice to and without any consent on the part of any person owning or occupying the land, or having or claiming any estate, right, title, or interest therein, to enter upon, set out, ascertain, and take possession of any private roads and any lands in the Province, and any timber thereon; and also in the like discretion to enter upon any land for the purpose of cutting any drains that may be thought necessary, with power to take any gravel, timber, stone, and other materials required for the construction of any highway or bridge.


DECISION

CIII.     For the stated reasons, I declare that Cosens Bay Road, travelled by the public from the turn of the century, is a public highway.

CIV.    The plaintiffs are entitled to their costs.

Vancouver, B.C., May 16, 1996                    "Collver, J."

Note that there is no specifications as to the width or quality of the "public highway" except for the reference of "not exceeding sixty-six feet" (20 meters).

The current effort by Highways to increase the excluded width to 30 meters (98.4 feet) is their own initiative.

Drivers are supposed to drive at a safe speed according to road conditions.

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Court case re: Cosens Bay road access - 1996.

The above lawsuit was initiated by the Cosens Bay cabin owners in 1996. Clicking on the document will provide the reader with the final judgement by Mr Justice Collver. Note the number of references to "water access only" (Anonymous, July 16 on previous post please note). There is no mention of the required of the degree of maintenance nor any services to be provided. The judgement only provided access to the cabins.

Since that judgement efforts were made by cabin owners to obtain services. The closest service provider would be the District of Coldstream. However, it would be a major drain on Coldstream's taxpayers to extend services to the cabins through the approximately 4.5 km access road to the cabin community.

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AT RANDOM: Who's laughing now?

By Kristin Froneman - Vernon Morning Star
Published: November 22, 2013 1:00 AM
 

You gotta love the comedy that comes from scandal. We humans really love to laugh at those who succumb to moral woes or plain, old stupidity, especially if their names are Anthony Weiner, (you can’t make that one up), Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and, yes, Rob Ford.

Before you start groaning of yet another opinion about Ford, this former Torontonian isn’t going to stoop to that low. Rather, I’d like to comment on all the hilariousness that has ensued, well except for that crack dealer who is sitting in jail, I don’t think he finds the situation all that funny. Nor do I think my former neighbours are too amused about their city being the laughing stock of the world. But, hey, get over it. There will soon be another scandal that will be spoofed on SNL.

Laughter is how we deal with the misfortune of others, except when those embarrassing moments are happening in your own backyard.

I have to admit I laughed my pants off at Anchorman Ron Burgundy singing Ford’s campaign song to the tune of Loverboy’s Working for the Weekend on the Conan show the other day, but what if it was my town, my mayor they were laughing at.

Oh, wait. I am having a deja vu moment, no crack involved.

Before the train wreck that was Ford Nation or the selfie-loving Weiner, or those secondary dwelling loving senators, we had our own scandal in beautiful Vernon, B.C.

I know many of you (me included) would like to forget, but all this Ford business has reminded me of what happened here in 2005.

For newcomers to this city, the scandal arose when a certain mayor decided to wine n’ dine  some fellow movers and shakers, including then Premier Gordon Campbell, with the city credit card. Problem is those movers and shakers didn’t seem to recall getting a free meal.

(It’s all spelled out on Wikipedia for goodness sakes.) Read more 

For a trip down memory lane  watch also the video below.

Incidentally, if you wonder how we got to our ridiculous water situation, the above  video reveals the reasons for the urgency to develop a new water system regardless of the cost to existing residents. Developments needed water, Vernon exhausted its available water licenses, thus, costs were no object to get more water.

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NDP nomination meeting set

Election Readiness

NDP nomination meeting set

Kate Bouey

8/26/2011

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Vernon Monashee New Democrats are getting ready for a provincial election.

She ran in the federal election in May, now the NDP's Nikki Inouye is hoping to have a shot at provincial politics. Inouye is one of two nominees hoping to become the NDP's Vernon-Monashee candidate for the next provincial election.

The other is Mark Olsen, who ran in the last BC poll, winning almost 32 percent of the vote. He says the Liberals appear to be getting ready for an election that could come at any time.

Olsen says an NDP nomination meeting will be held at the Schubert Centre on September 11th.

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BEYOND THE HEADLINES: Stop the rhetoric

By Richard Rolke - Vernon Morning Star
Published: August 03, 2011 1:00 AM

If you listen to Mayor Wayne Lippert, Vernon is the municipal equivalent to Luke Skywalker while Coldstream and the electoral areas get the heavy-breathing role of Darth Vader.

In response to Coldstream announcing it doesn’t support splitting up the water utility, Lippert told Kiss FM, “It just shows they can’t hold to an agreement, so if you can’t hold to an agreement with someone, what kind of partnership can you expect to have?”

Now if my memory holds up, Coldstream has always been fairly consistent that Vernon’s urge to leave water distribution is a mistake and will negatively impact all customers who have invested in the multi-million-dollar system. Coldstream was more likely driven towards letting Vernon withdraw as a way of ending the debate than thinking it’s a good idea.

Lippert’s criticism came at the same time that Vernon council declared opposition to any changes to the parks and recreation function — something Coldstream has wanted.

“The service serves all of the citizens and it’s been working fine,” said Lippert.

While Lippert slams Coldstream for flip-flopping over water, the city’s position on parks has more cracks than 27th Street.

Motions have been passed saying council favours the status quo, but at other times, officials have indicated no concern with some parks being removed from the service and being maintained by individual jurisdictions.

In February 2010, Lippert told The Morning Star that he supported reviewing the scope of the parks function which was formed in 1978.

“The public’s demands have changed and new people have come in. We need to change the service for the better for the needs of our citizens,” he said.

Coldstream’s push for more control over what it considers to be local parks is no different than Vernon insisting it can do better if it’s not part of regional water distribution.

If a go-it alone approach is suitable for Vernon, why is it so against one of its neighbours taking a similar direction?

Ultimately, all residents of Greater Vernon, will be harmed by jurisdictions dropping out of water or parks. Sharing capital and operational costs makes sense instead of placing a significant burden on taxpayers in any one area. In some cases, facilities aren’t owned by either municipality but collectively by the Regional District of North Okanagan.

It should also be pointed out that all residents use the parks and recreation facilities, while water from Duteau Creek and Kalamalka Lake flows into homes in all jurisdictions.

Lippert has suggested that people are increasingly frustrated with the conflicts at RDNO and the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee. And while that may be true, Vernon can’t separate itself from both agencies. It has a seat at the table and covers a large chunk of the budget. Vernon is RDNO and GVAC.

Speaking of conflict, Lippert was the subject of a blistering attack last week.

“I don’t believe anyone can get along with Wayne Lippert,” Coldstream Mayor Jim Garlick said in response to Lippert’s radio comments.

“Wayne Lippert has a way of turning everything into a fight.”

It’s not unusual for elected politicians to joust back and forth, but the personal tone of Garlick’s rant was unprecedented.

Obviously Garlick has issues with Vernon, but the city is equally frustrated by what it sees as Coldstream’s inflexible stance over parks.

Garlick claims that getting along with Lippert is difficult but it’s unlikely Garlick’s actions will help discussions flow any easier. Speaking his mind may have felt good, but will it help his residents?

Ultimately, both Garlick and Lippert have expressed concerns about the long-term impact of the ongoing dispute. But if they truly want to do what’s best for their constituents, they’ll check the rhetoric at the door and get down to business.

Richard Rolke is the senior reporter for The Morning Star

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ALC shoots down Greater Vernon sports facility plans

CHBC report on Greater Vernon Sports Facility....




......and the College's Press release.




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Facts and fiction-- comments on Mayor Lippert's newspaper ads.

Mayor Lippert produced an ad in two consecutive issues of the Morning Star under “Mayor’s Corner” (see attached). Impressive ads! It would be even more impressive if they were factual. It is possible that the information relating to city taxes are accurate. However, the NORD related information is incorrect. One would think that with the scrutiny of highly paid staff this kind of mistake would be discovered (including the mistake in the first line of the ad).

Where the information is wrong relates to Parks and Recreation, arts and culture, the Performing Arts Centre and Wesbild Centre. Taxes for these services are based on property values expressed as “mill rate” and not “population based” which would be “per capita charge”. You can verify this by checking your property tax form. The majority of assessed values are located in the city therefore the majority of taxes are levied to the city. The ad seem to imply that the city is paying an unfair share of the cost of the Parks and Recreation services.

City representatives on NORD Board fully supported these taxes. There are three Directors from the City one from Coldstream and one each from Area “B” and “C”. No financial resolution can be passed without full support of city Directors.

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Water Rate Calculator for Proposed 2011 Rates

Water Rate Calculator for Proposed 2011 Rates (Courtesy of Vernon Blog)

In order to be allowed to enter your data go to bottom of Calculator page and click on edit.

This calculator allows you to put your 2010 Quarterly water amounts in the 4 areas in Red and it will display both your 2010 Water Charges and a comparison to the 3 proposed water rates that will be debated in the New Year at the GVSC.

Please simply type in your First quarter Cubic meter Quantity and hit tab. Then type in your 2nd quarter quantity and hit tab. (Etc. Etc.)

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Don Quixote Note: My 2010 Quarterly Water M3 consumption was 64, 83, 73 and 62 (est) and my 2010 water bill was $396.06. In 2011 my water bill will increase by 15.69% or $62.14 under the low option, 52.20% or $206.74 under the medium option, and 91.74% or $363.34 under the high option.

Posted by Don Quixote at 12/28/2010 1 comments

Coldstream, OBWB and NORD meetings for the week of October 4-8.

Coldstream Committee Meetings October 4, 2010

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Okanagan Basin Water Board Meeting, October 5,2010

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Regional District Meetings, October 6, 20101

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Longer Council Terms Defeated at UBCM -- Vernon councillors vote against four-year terms

Kate Bouey

9/30/2010

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BC mayors and council members will still serve three-year terms after a ballot to extend them to four years was defeated Thursday morning at the UBCM convention in Whistler. Vernon Mayor Wayne Lippert says over 600 delegates cast ballots after a close `hands up' vote the day before. The secret ballot saw 354 mayors and councillors vote against the change while 280 were in favour. Vernon councillors voted against lengthening the term in office.

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Fairness in garbage!

My comments on the above news item elicited vigorous debate (see debate). It is worth to elaborate on the subject because the principles I tried to elucidate are valid not only for compulsory garbage collection but for other local government services as well.

Mandatory garbage collection, the way it is implemented in the city of Vernon, is basically a parcel tax. Each household pays $22.12 a quarter ($96.48 per year) and for this they can have up to two bags disposed every week. Theoretically speaking a high user may contribute up to 104 bags per year for a per bag fee of $0.92 while a conscientious low user who disposes a bag a month might pay $8.00 per bag. Not a fair arrangement. This is why I am against compulsory garbage collection as it is proposed by NORD.

A fair system would be to pay perhaps 20% of the total collection costs via access fee and the difference by tag fee. This would be fair as it would make those users who use the service more, contribute more to the total cost and would also encourage customers to reduce their garbage output.

Similar considerations motivate me for trying to improve sewer fees and water rates. I just need public support for my efforts.

Our current sewer and water fees are worth reviewing and I will attempt to do just that in a future article.

I would appreciate all comments, anonymous or direct, from all readers. If you wish to stay anonymous, click on the “comments” at the bottom of the article and follow the instructions (select Anonymous”from the choices) . The comments come through Google without revealing the identity of the commentator. You can also send me comments through email, address is at the top of the page.

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Readers write -Response to the "A Word Is it time?"

Excerpt from: Municipal amalgamations in Atlantic Canada and beyond: Why amalgamate?

A talk to the Annual Meeting of the BC Municipal Finance Authority

by Brian Lee Crowley, President, Atlantic Institute for Market Studies

local government is not merely a device for supplying municipal services, but also for finding out what services people want and how much they are prepared to pay for them. The smaller the government unit, the better they are at discovering this, because the empirical evidence is very strong that local government is closest to the people.

Amalgamation tends to undermine this relationship and therefore can only really be justified if there are pretty remarkable efficiencies to compensate for dilution of responsiveness and democratic accountability.

But, second, they would have discovered that the evidence is quite strong that creating single-tier local government monopolies doesn’t reduce costs — it increases them. It levels costs up to the highest common denominator in the pre-existing units, and seems to result in higher trends of cost growth over This is especially true where amalgamation has eliminated competition between pre-existing municipalities both in terms of attracting residents and industry and in terms of tax and service levels. It seems that the most dynamic force helping to keep costs down is not a highly centralised and bureaucratic monopoly provider of public services, but a decentralisation of authority and decisionmaking within several municipalities within an urban area where residents cannot vote themselves benefits at the expense of other taxpayers in other parts of the city. This ensures that people only demand services that they’re prepared to pay for, and municipalities have powerful incentives to keep costs low and satisfaction high, or risk the erosion of their tax base as people and businesses vote with their feet.

Third, they would have discovered that it is a fairly small part of public services where there are significant returns to scale — in other words where the bigger you are, the cheaper it is to produce a unit of a given service. The evidence says pretty unambiguously that the lowest observable level of per unit costs for most services are compatible with very small municipal units (on the order of 5,000-10,000 residents). Moreover, there are significant diseconomies of scale beyond relatively small population numbers — on the order of 250,000 residents. And, finally, that the supposed savings from smaller councils and elimination of several city halls and other trappings of multiple local governments, is so paltry as to be not even worth mentioning.

But of course, given the culture of executive personalism that I mentioned, they didn’t consult the literature. Had they done so, they, like California under Ronald Reagan, would likely quickly have abandoned their amalgamation policy.

Crowley's 2009 Red Deer Alberta talk, note: "spend-thrift city centres"

http://www.auma.ca/live/digitalAssets/33/33585_BrianCrowley_09PS.pdf

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A Word Is it time? -- Betty Selin 9/7/2010 105.7 SUNFM

"The silliness needs to end somewhere. That's the comment from Vernon Mayor Wayne Lippert when we asked him recently if amalgamation would solve the infighting in the North Okanagan Regional District... Vernon's Mayor says he brings up the issue of amalgamation with Ministers and the Premier every chance he gets. Lippert says more and more residents and businesses are asking for a merger of area communities. He says in recent talks with the Premier on amalgamation, Gordon Cambpell told him one of the challenges is that too many people are afraid of change. Lippert says governance issues have come up recently over transit, water and fire dispatch."(Vernon Blog)

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Another Wayne, another Wayne's WORD. Where have I heard those words before? You guessed it: another Wayne used to bring it up at regular intervals when his political agenda differed from that of other local politicians.

My comments are as follows:

Gordon Campbell also told all of us that the HST was not on the radar prior to the last election.

Each elected local government has a duty to look after their electors interest. Should they not do so they would be guilty of dereliction of duty.

With respect to Fire dispatch it was the City which pulled out from the service.

With respect to water it was the City which wished to partially pull out of the water agreement.

As far as I understand, the transit service has not been settled yet.

Perhaps SUN FM should occasionally consult with the other local governments as well for their side of the stories. But then again, that would be fair and who wants fairness in reporting?

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Further on "Question on sewer rates."

Since I only received half a dozen responses to my question I assume most of the sewer customers are not too concerned about the pending rate increases. Perhaps a little extra information may tweak your interest.

There at least tree issues that annoys me about this sudden increase in sewer rates.

1.

It was presented late into the fiscal year, after all our financial plans were finalized. The last two years rates were quite stable as the following table demonstrates:

The $1.54 per cubic meter increase is 20% higher than the previous two years average rate.

2.

The sewage meter measuring the volume of sewage contributed by Coldstream must have had a hiccup. The following histogram demonstrates the volumes registered by the meter during the past two years and the two quarters this year.

Note the volume in the first quarter of this year sticking out like a sour thumb. How can we reconcile a volume of 186,132 cubic meters, 48% higher than the next highest volume registered in the second quarter of this year? It is 88% higher than the average of the first quarter of 2008 and 2009. Does that sound reasonable to anyone? Now the histogram:

3.

While Coldstream is hit with a huge increase in fees “...Okanagan Spring Brewery will have its sewer (biological oxygen demand) surcharge cut by 50 percent until the end of 2012...”(Vernon Blog). This will cost sewer users an estimated $125,000 annually for a total of about $375,000. Is that fair?

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Readers write -- Kin Racetrack shots.

Hi Gyula,

Here are a few pictures taken yesterday at the Kin Race Track, just wondering if you would mind putting them up on your blog, it was a lovely (but hot) day.... nevertheless the event was very well attended.

Thanks,

Maria

Just for information: Castanet is conducting a poll asking:

Do you think the Vernon Kin race track should be closed in favour of a sports field? (Race Track.)

As of 9:53 AM 472 of the 664 voters chose not to close the track. Something for us politicians to think about!

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