Photo: Castanet Staff

Protest against the Skaha Lake waterslide in 2016

The arduous three-year journey to rewrite the City of Penticton’s 25-year-old parks policy finally ended Tuesday with council adopting a new municipal parks master plan.

The city embarked on overhauling its entire parks plan in the wake of the Skaha Lake waterslide debacle, leaving the task to a committee made up of community stakeholders and volunteers supported by city staff and a consulting firm.

“This is a three year project, when I signed up for this I thought it would be a year and a half,” said committee chair Rom Ramsay, thanking the group for the work they've done in addition to the support from city staff.

The dense 141-page master plan is anchored by an overarching goal to protect and preserve public park space.

“The City of Penticton will not enter into a lease of land dedicated as park… without the approval of the electors,” the policy states. 

City councillors heaped kudos upon the committee for sticking through what was a painfully tedious task at times, hammering out definitions like what exactly makes a green-space a protected park and more.

City council also passed four parks bylaws related to the master plan which define, in legislation, Penticton’s parks, acceptable uses and the required elector approval for leases within them. The plan has been endorsed by the Protect Penticton Parks Society.

“I don’t think it's easy for government to admit when they made a mistake, or have the courage to fix it, regardless of if it started off with the best of intentions. So I think today is a good day,” Mayor Andrew Jakubeit said.

“Hopefully this really helps to put closure on a issue that was quite prominent in our community and allows wounds to heal,” he added. “Wounds I would argue at times, festered and potentially even got ugly.”

With the job done for the city’s current committee on the development of the park’s plan, council approved a framework for a new parks and recreation advisory committee moving forward. The committee with have 14 voting members made up of representatives from the PIB, SD67 and community members.

Its recommended the city take another look at the master plan in 7-10 years, council heard.