Town turned into a stripmall

The citizens of Peachland were stunned, as city council defied them by effectively rescinding the city’s Official Community Plan (OCP) to allow development that will set the stage for turning our pristine downtown into a massive strip-mall.

Statutory Public Hearings no longer serve as an avenue for public input, when city councillors are just sitting there, stonewalling the citizens. Without the constraints of an OCP, development will be out of control, and so will the costs to serve those developments, and taxes will be spiralling into orbit, as an intransigent city council has put Peachland on a collision course to meet that reality.

Politicians have embraced growth-at-any-cost to pursue their personal and political ambitions and teaming up with developers the doors for corruption are wide open.

The city of Vancouver opened the flood-gates to billions of dollars of drug and off-shore money, and it has destroyed the lower mainland real estate market, radically inflating the cost of housing. Today people are forced out of their homes because of huge increases in property taxes and rental space is becoming smaller and pricier, completely out of reach for the working people.

The Okanagan has not been immune to that tsunami, and city councillors up and down the valley have embraced this ‘fool’s gold’ like it was the salvation to make up for their financial shortcomings.

While Peachland city council turned their backs on the people to embrace an out of town developer, the Mayor of Kelowna voted no to the latest application to exceed the height restriction in the city’s OCP.

Does that mean there finally is light at the end of the tunnel?

Andy Thomsen