Once again you are faced with a special interest groups attempting to co-opt public lands for their localized and specialized use. In this case it is the BMX Club.
One of the most valuable assets any society has are its parks and natural areas. Riverside Park and Munson Mountain are two of these gems. Places that have been set aside and primarily managed to provide green space, lawns and trees for citizens and visitors as they attempt to escape the overall drone and hassle of machines (vehicle and bike traffic) and human congestion by retreating to quiet, more calm, visually peaceful spaces. This is where people come to relax, read, nap, stroll, essentially rejuvenate their body and their mind and spirit.
Now we see a special interest group that caters to very select users. Bikers have often been correctly labeled as elitist, largely because the machines and gear they use are costly, hundreds to thousands of dollars, which places them out of range of most Penticton citizens and families. They are proposing they permanently invade the cities green spaces and parks.
A bike track, even a bike trail, wherever they may occur, causes considerable damage to the land and vegetation and causes, as the BMX club has (finally) conceded, considerable social disruption and impact on local residents and non biker citizens, this through noise and dust. It’s not relevant whether volunteers want to build biking contraptions and dirt/mud tracks for their exclusive enjoyment — these have no place in Riverside Park, or any park for that matter.
It is nonsense to impose this activity, engaged in by a tiny minority of people, on landscapes designed and intended to cater to and accommodate the vast majority of Pentictonites.
Additionally, it is simply misleading bravado to wave the economic booster flag. What’s really at stake here is whether an activity that will displace citizens, impose environmental degradation (destroy the green space and vegetation) in a park (Riverside) and/or a natural area (Munson), create disturbance and social conflict, impose costs on we taxpayers (for water, lights, and who knows what else) should be permitted on parkland even if they promise three or four days of spiked use.
Don’t all these groups engage in that innuendo? And, taxpayers are still in debt from some of these schemes.
I recognize this council has a strong economic bias when it comes to evaluating any offer before it. But this is a case where you have to overcome that and focus on these exceptional public areas and their long-term and growing value to virtually everyone that lives and visits here. To sacrifice them for single use by a relative few is short-sighted and plain wrong.
There may be a place for an expanded track somewhere in the area, possibly in a gravel pit or some other industrial site already sacrificed to destruction of the natural environment, domination by machines and displacement of the public.
But stay out of Riverside Park or Munson Mountain. They are extremely valuable, even today, let alone down the road a bit. Say no to BMX at these locations.
Dr. Brian L. Horejsi
Penticton