Mayor and council, please quit hoodwinking us. On one hand, you tell the public you will abide by the opinion poll majority by not allowing a prison in Penticton. Then, on the other, you vowed support for First Nations proposals of which one is situated within the city boundaries.
Later, we learn you have sold a piece of our land that is situated adjacent to the South Okanagan Events Centre to a developer for far less than we paid for it.
To further aggravate us, you gifted it tax free for several years. You did this without advertising the sale for potential competing interests. What is worse, you let them move in before ponying up the cash. And next? The deal bombed. Wow! I’m interested. Do you have anymore of these shady deals in the wings?
Now you are telling us you are gearing up to revitalize a sagging tourism economy. This flies against what I understand is the council’s vision of prying the tennis club from its Okanagan Lake waterfront site so that a hotel, townhouses and increased traffic can adorn this beautiful, open, park-like green space on limited city waterfront. One councillor, according to a newspaper article, would like to see the whole area bulldozed flat.
What a travesty this would be since we have very limited public waterfront, which is our largest asset for attracting tourists. What rationale could the city council possibly have to turn this popular public recreation and respite site into a hotel and residential area considering we still have many vacant sites for development elsewhere in the city?
And then there is the questionable residential power increase, and on and on.
I sincerely hope the new members on the council can inject some sanity into the management of Penticton, because from my perspective, the mayor and a few councillors have become a burden to sane and intelligent growth of our city.
And thank you, Mayor Ashton, for not replying to my well-intentioned email sent over a month ago. I suspect I would have been hoodwinked once again.
Sheldon Hansen
Penticton