Pickleball Scores Grant and Site - KISS FM News

A large crowd of pickle ball players attended the GVAC meeting this morning!

The Vernon Pickleball Association has scored a major victory with local government.

 The Greater Vernon Advisory Committee has agreed in principle to provide the club with a $300,000 grant, and a site in Marshall Fields for a 12 court facility.

Group spokesman Don Friesen says they could have the courts open in three months.

“I suspect, and I really hope, we will have something to show for the BC 55 plus Games (in September). Whether or not they will be completed, I don’t have that answer. There are too many variables, ” Friesen told the media.

The association has over 300 members and not enough courts.

The club will provide the rest of the estimated 600-thousand dollar cost, and will work out an agreement with RDNO for the group to operate the new facility.

The government action came after a staff report that estimated the cost of a pickleball facility at 1.4 million dollars, an estimate RDNO staff got from an engineering firm.

Friesen got the interest of GVAC directors when he stated he could complete the project for far less, about $600,000.

“One of the things that was in that (RDNO estimate) was $400,000 in contingencies. I’ve researched every aspect, and in doing that I was able to present that to contractors and get real numbers, rather than contingency numbers. As well we’ve got in-kind donations, for instance, M and K Redi Mix is giving us $36,000 worth of foundation blocks at no charge — the president plays pickleball.”

Friesen says his group, which has so far raised $53,000 for the facility, also plans to apply for grants, and get sponsors.

“It will show that Vernon is ready to hold some really good tournaments for pickleball and bring a lot of revenue into the community, the same as Funtastic and the 55 Plus Games. We will run tournaments on a regular basis,” adds Friesen.

The price does not include a roof on the facility which would cost another one million dollars.

RDNO would get its $300,000 from short term borrowing or from reserve funds.

About 60 pickleball players packed the RDNO boardroom for Thursday’s GVAC meeting.

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Ambitious fundraising campaign pitched for realization of Okanagan rail trail

By Charlotte Helston
InfoNews

VERNON - Greater Vernon politicians have been told it will take a community to build the legacy of a 50 kilometre rail trail from Coldstream to Kelowna — and it’s no overstatement.

Those working on the trail, which will follow the old CN Railroad, have proposed an ambitious fundraising campaign for the $7.68 million required to build the path, plus roughly $100,000 in administrative fees for handling donations. The current plan is to pay for the construction of the trail without using tax dollars. Roughly $1.2 million is being sought through grants.

Brad Clements, with the Okanagan Rail Trail non-profit organization, told the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee today, April 18, "it takes a community to build a legacy."

“We believe we can do it by inspiring all of the community,” Clements said.

The team will be looking to businesses, clubs and organizations to help champion the trail. Donations will be handled by the Community Foundation of the North Okanagan and the Central Okanagan Foundation.

“The key to raising the $7.86 million is that the entire community embraces this,” Clements said. “That we have champions in every community out creating excitement around the trail. That we have campaign partners hosting events, and raising awareness, and that we talk to our neighbours and our neighbour’s neighbours.”

Clements says 30,000 donations of $225 a piece would be needed to accomplish the fundraising target. Depending on participation, Clements believes it’s possible to meet the goal in two years.

Details about the construction timeline and overall look of the trail were also presented at Monday’s meeting. Andrew Gibbs with the Inter-Jurisdictional Team, which represents the municipalities of Kelowna, Lake Country and the North Okanagan, said the goal is to open the trail up for public use as early as possible. That will mean focussing on basic trail functionality items first, and integrating things like public washrooms and interpretive facilities in the future. At the outset, the trail would feature crushed and compacted gravel with the possibility of paving it in the future. Planners are also proposing to widen the path to 4.6 metres to accommodate various users travelling in opposite directions.

The plan is to build the trail all at once, rather than in pieces, once the funding is in place, Gibbs said. That will help minimize the risk of ending up with incomplete sections if funding dries up, resulting in some communities having finished sections of trail and others lacking.

Committee member Mike Macnabb expressed some skepticism about the fundraising campaign, stating he thinks it could take years to come up with the cash.

“My concern was how quickly we can get to that point? Because if it’s going to be raised by public donations, it may take a long time to get there,” he said.

Having purchased the trail alongside other municipalities, Macnabb says the regional district has an obligation to see the plan through.

“At what point are we, as local government, responsible to pick up the shortfall?” he said.

Rail trail planners are meeting with other jurisdictions today, and say as soon as they have approval from all local governments, they will launch the fundraising campaign and begin accepting donations.

Committee chair Juliette Cunningham applauded the Rail Trail group for taking on the fundraising campaign.

“I just think it’s incredible. So, we have to do whatever we can to work with you — that’s a lot of free labour to raise a lot of money,” Cunningham said of the volunteer-run group.

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Here is a partial list of current and pending projects in Greater Vernon (in addition to the Rail Trail):
          New Ice Rink;
          New Museum;
          New Art Gallery;
          Master Water Plan;
          Amphitheater, and the recently completed but currently being paid for
          Athletic field.

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GVAC Returns Leaders - (The Empire strikes back)

Posted on 1/7/2016  

by Pete McIntyre

 

Directors on the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee have decided to stick with the current leaders.

Juliette Cunningham has been acclaimed to another one year term as chair of the parks, recreation, culture and water committee of the regional district
.
The Vernon councillor says they have some big items on this year's agenda.

"Some of the big issues are the culture plan, and the master water plan, both significant issues. Those are pretty big, and then we have all the emerging issues that arise like pickleball and tennis."

Coldstream mayor Jim Garlick was returned as the vice chair by acclamation, after a nomination for Coldstream's Gyula Kiss was not allowed as he is not an RDNO board member.

Garlick was also nominated to run for chair by Kiss, but declined.

"I think I have enough things on my plate right now," Garlick tells Kiss FM. "And the other thing is I like people who are not mayors having that opportunity to chair other things, taking those roles and responsibility,  and councillor Cunningham has done a good job."

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It came to me as a surprise. Of the last 25 years I have been an elected member of Coldstream for 16 of those years. I served in various capacities starting as an Alderman which changed to Councillor, than as Mayor, RDNO Director, Okanagan Basin Water Board Chair and for the past six years as a Councillor and one of the GVAC reps for Coldstream. Never in the past have I been considered a lesser member of a committee than the rest of the members. Except for today! Even though I was duly elected by the taxpayers of Coldstream I was declared ineligible for the position of Vice Chair! A totally new rule! Amazing! And Coldstream paid over $2.7 M for water in 2014.

  

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Financial effects of potential Stage 2 water restrictions.

The following report was published in the June 28th edition of the Vernon Morning Star:

The above proposal was neither cleared by GVAC nor the RDNO Board so I rely on the report for the accuracy of the proposed water conservation move. However, the financial consequences of this proposal should be investigated before it is implemented.

For my own information I attempted to analyze the effects of a 10% consumption decrease. I am sharing the results with you.

Assuming that all rate classes (Tiers A, B, C, D and E as well as ICI) will comply with the 10% consumption cutbacks there will be a 10% reduction in revenue as well. It is also assumed that agricultural customers are not subjected to the general water restrictions and only the fiscal consequences on domestic customers are treated here. 

GVWU has a revenue expectation from their domestic customers of $17,845,332 for 2015.The base fee component of this sum is $9,905,140 and will not be affected by the reduction in consumption. Only the consumption revenue of $8,161,328 will be reduced. Reducing consumption by 10% will reduce the revenue by 10% as well creating a budget shortfall of $816,133 (see Table 1). There are 24,325 water accounts in Greater Vernon, thus, the budget shortfall will be $33.55 per account. 

Table 1.    Revenue losses by rate classes with 10% water consumption reduction.

This shortfall should be recovered in 2016 by increasing either all components of the rate structure used by GVWU by about 4-5% or simply add the $33.55 to the annual base fees. The latter is more reliable for recovering the needed revenues so it is likely that staff would recommend this method for recovery. The new base fees, then, would have to be increased to $445.75 ($110.19 per quarter, an 8.24% increase) just to cover the shortfall of 2015. It is quite likely that other increases in expenditure will be required resulting in further rate increases.

The big question is: how would these changes affect customers of the various Tiers financially? I made some calculations and the results are demonstrated in Table 2 . As the table demonstrates, low water consumers would be bearing the brunt of the costs created by loss of revenue due to the water saving measure.

Table 2: Effect on the various rate classes created by 10% water consumption cut.

 A customer using 10 cubic meters of water a quarter would reduce consumption by 1 cu. m. per quarter (4 cu. m. per year) and would save $2.04 a year. At the same time the $33.55 additional base fee would increase his/her bill by $31.51 (33.55-2.04). A customer using 80 cu. m. per quarter would save $15.41 while a customer using a 1000 cu. m. per quarter could save a hefty $843.65 per year.

There might be other measures staff will recommend to GVAC but the unavoidable fact is: water conservation measures will create a deficit for 2015 and the deficit would have to be recovered in the next budget year. This point is missing from the news article.

The real user pay rate system I proposed would resolve this reduction of water usage by simply multiplying the volume of water originally estimated to be sold by 0.9. The new base fee and water rate would be revealed instantly. Every customer would be bearing the cost of the water saving initiative equally.

I would be happy to answer any questions regarding to this analysis.

Gyula Kiss

Kalamalka Lake water is back on!

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BC News Release - BC pledges $7.2 million towards Rail Trail

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Call For Plan Ban Rejected

Written by Peter McIntyre 
Friday, 06 March 2015 16:21

A citizen's group says public opinion appears to be swaying over the direction of Greater Vernon's master water plan.

Terry Mooney from Citizens For Change is pleased to hear local politicians at least talking about limiting the Duteau Creek source to farming, and switching domestic customers to Kalamalka and Okanagan lakes which he says would be far less costly.

"I think there's a will now for the public representatives to at least have a good look at this master water plan and fix the mistakes that were made in the 1960's and 70's," Mooney tells Kiss FM.

Mooney says his group is disappointed the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee decided against a moratorium on all master water plan projects based on last November's failed referendum.

"We were trying to make the distinction that it has nothing to do with the day to day operations, but we still need the direction that money is not to be spent on any of the six projects tied to the referendum," says Mooney.

GVAC vice chair Jim Garlick disagreed, saying that vote was for borrowing 70 million dollars for six projects, not a vote on the plan itself.

BX Silver Star director Mike Macnabb led the opposition to the motion made by Coldstream director Gyula Kiss, saying a ban doesn't make sense, given that everything they do with water, relates to the master water plan.

Vernon director Bob Spiers supported the ban, saying if at some point they decide the Duteau source won't be used for domestic use, studies in this year's budget will be unnecessary.

"Why spend that money?, asked Spiers. "It should be put into a pending reserve for master water plan projects."

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 "...vote was for borrowing 70 million dollars for six projects, not a vote on the plan itself."

I wonder how we could actually go ahead with a plan that has no funding. 

Unless we ask people why they turned down the borrowing it is simply a guess why they did so. Coldstream residents voted 70% against the referendum. Did they do so because of the money or because they did not like this particular plan? Perhaps they did not like the idea that after spending close to $200 million they would still be irrigating agricultural crops with very expensive filtered water.

Just for the sake of argument let's assume they turned it down because of the money. Where would GVWU get the funds to implement the plan? Will they start collecting the $70 million through increased water rates? Perhaps. But having rejected the borrowing at an estimated annual repayment of about $5 million would these same ratepayers be happy with increased water rates in the order of $10-14 million a year? GVW did that after the 2004 referendum but now there are more careful watchdogs keeping their eyes on the till. Santa Claus (senior governments) is unlikely to come up with the dough so our investigative reporters should find out from where the money is expected to come from for the "unrejected" MWP.

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Selected Morning Star Newsclips - In case you missed them

 

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PRESS RELEASE FEBRUARY 4TH, 2015

FROM: CITIZENS FOR CHANGE TO THE MASTER WATER PLAN (CCMWP)

We are a group of Greater Vernon residents who have joined together to assess the staff driven requests for higher water rates to fund the long term capital programs and to increase the reserves for future needs.

Our group wants to ensure that the public will, expressed by the November 15 referendum, is upheld. At the GVAC meeting on January 22, we requested a moratorium on all spending approval relating to the defeated referendum and expressed our view that a new direction needed to be pursued. We are in the process of preparing a presentation for the GVAC which will provide recommendations for needed changes to the Master Water plan.

At the January 22^nd meeting of the GVAC, there was no action taken on our request for a moratorium. However we noted that the GVAC seemed to focus on defining mechanisms to defeat or by-pass the negative result of the referendum, but they also acknowledged that a new direction to the Master Water Plan was required. It appears that our elected representatives are prepared to consider “back-door” funding that will move RDNO pre-referendum programs forward by raising water rates to cover the costs of the expenditures, under the cover of ‘reserves’, and to date without public input.

Our group is concerned that the budget debate scheduled for tomorrow morning will proceed to set water rates, before we have an opportunity to present our proposed new direction for the Master Water Plan, and then the taxpayer rate will be locked in to commitments defeated by the water plan referendum. Water rates for the same amount of drinking water in 2014 show that Greater Vernon domestic water users pay $899.70, more than twice the Penticton rate of $427.62, and triple the $291.98 in Kelowna, for the same amount of water. From 2010 to 2014 the cost of a cu. meter of drinking water has doubled for Greater Vernon water users.

Changes to the billing structure mean that less of the water bill is from metered usage and more is coming from arbitrary fixed front end charges.

Our citizen’s group is again calling for a moratorium until the GVAC has an opportunity to review our proposal. The next available opportunity for our presentation is March 5 and we ask that all budget approvals supporting water rate increases be suspended until that date, or we ask that a special meeting of the GVAC be convened, to allow our elected representatives to be informed of the proposed new direction to the Master Water Plan.

Contact Information: Terry Mooney, temo@telus.net or 250-542-2847

 Eric Jackson, Janet Green, Wayne McGrath, 

Klaus Tribes, Maria Besso, Dennis Windsor, 

Jim Bodkin, Terry Mooney. Absent: Dana Mills

See also KISS FM News

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The first Special GVAC meeting done - many more to come.

The first post referendum MWP meeting has come and gone. Participants, including members of the surprisingly large audience, presented their individual vision on the future of the Greater Vernon Water Plan. 

The general view was that the plan should investigate new directions. No direction was endorsed yet but the general consensus was that the public should be involved in the new direction and should own the new plan.

My input was simple: return to Duteau to agriculture use, no treatment of any sort, and provide treated domestic water to all domestic customers from the Kalamalka/Okanagan Lake system. That would require removal of domestic customers from the current mixed water system to avoid treatment of water used for agriculture. This should be the direction we would all work towards and develop the details as we go forward.

Anyone wishing to have his/her voice heard could get a hold of any politician or provide their thoughts to me by email (gyula1@shaw.ca) or to this blog blog via the comment function. Remember, a new Plan is not going to be free but our investment should result in a plan that is the best for the long term water supply, both domestic and agriculture, for the ratepayers of Greater Vernon.

Let us hope for success!

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Winter Slowdown For Sports Facility

Written by Glen Morrison  
Friday, 24 October 2014 06:00 

Greater Vernon's new sports facility by Okanagan  College will be doing some curing over the winter but is still set for a late spring opening.

Regional director Bob Fleming says tenders are now being looked over for the buildings.

"Finding ways and presenting ways or potential ways that cost savings could be made to come closer to our target, and so we're about to hear back on  that," he says.

Fleming says they're ready to lay the artificial track but that won't happen until spring as it's felt to be too risky to put it in at this time of year without curing time.

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Costs Of Water Plan Will Be Reviewed

Written by Peter McIntyre Friday, 04 April 2014 06:01

Local politicians will see if there's any flexibility from the province for what will be a costly water project.

Interior Health wants over 20 million dollars in filtration upgrades added to the Duteau Creek treatment plant, but the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee will see if that can be delayed.

Director Bob Spiers doesn't see that as a priority, saying our water already meets all the standards.

"And if it's so important to our water quality, why are we allowed to defer it to 2022? I just can't get an answer on that," Spiers tells Kiss FM.

And while there will be a peer review of the filtration, directors rejected a request by Coldstream's Gyula Kiss for an independent review of the overall master water plan.

Kiss says he will continue to point what he feels are flaws in the 180 million dollar plan, despite not getting much support from his colleagues.

"Upset? Why would I be upset? I did my work and presented my findings and it's up to the board to decide whether they want to rubber-stamp this," says Kiss.

Kiss feels it would have been beneficial to get another opinion on the plan, as the same consultants have worked on it since 2002.

"They have contradicted themselves for 13 years with various plans, and I think the public deserves an option that will actually do what they want it to, and that's a separate domestic and agricultural system, then everyone knows who's paying what," adds Kiss.

Both Bob Fleming from Area B (BX Swan Lake), and Area C's Mike Macnabb (BX Silver Star) spoke in favour of proceeding with the plan without a peer review.

"I think there's been a thorough and thoughtful review, and it's the best option that's been presented," said Fleming.

"We have to move forward. We have chosen the most flexible option," stated Macnabb.

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