Last summer, and in the months since, Penticton City Council got a shock when strong protest erupted against their plans to lease a portion of Skaha Lake Park.
The shock continued as the protest continued and, instead of fading away, gathered more members, more steam and even managed to organize enough to file a civil suit in B.C. Supreme Court.
Though they aren’t backing away from the deal with Trio Marine, Mayor Andrew Jakubeit said one of the lessons was that they need better engagement with the population.
While their new engagement plan is certainly more robust, reaching out to the community via telephone and online surveys, as well as community open houses and directed sessions with various sectors, it really boils down to more of the same.
Surveys, focus groups, booths at the market, these are all good things, but they really are several removes from council members engaging directly with the public. The input and feed back generated through these kinds of engagement is filtered through city staff or a consultant — possibly both — before being passed on to a committee, and then back to council, with interpretation by city staff members.
If council really wanted to hear what the people think, so they wouldn’t be surprised as they were after the original Okanagan lakeshore revitalizations were released, and again by the backlash over the Skaha Lake park deal, they need to do away with the middlemen to some degree.
We live in an age where a non-binding referendum is as easy as posing a question on your website. Those without — or simply don’t want — easy access to the Internet can be accommodated by phone voting or other methods. Then council might have got a clear warning that a large part of the community wasn’t happy about a 29-plus year lease in a park before they voted on allowing it.
But nothing is as good as simply facing the public. Former mayor Garry Litke had a good idea when he instituted his brown bag lunches with the mayor. It’s something the present council should look at.