Greed destroying Kelowna

We have a city council that has abandoned its social conscience, caved to the developers and big business, and committed itself to an agenda of explosive growth to accommodate another 50,000 consumers for the exclusive purpose of making bigger profits.

Nobody else and nothing else is driving the agenda at our city hall. 

Input from the people is being ignored, and our city has very quickly entered a state of severe social decay.

When business people are leaving because our police are telling them "there is nothing we can do here," when owners and employees feel threatened by people entering their business premises, and when they do not respond to calls when people are trespassing on private property – or, as happened more recently, when people are swarming your car, then we have essentially entered a state of emergency.

Our city does not need or have another $10 million to spend on more policing – $33 million for this tax year is already an insane amount of money to spend on policing, especially when considering the RCMP seems to have been disabled.

What we need is to identify and address the problems that prevent the police from doing their job, and then we have to create our own city police force that will work with, and as an integral part of, our bylaw department to provide more effective policing and to reclaim control of our streets.

Instead of building and operating not one but five multi-purpose, one-size-fits-all supportive housing units, why not define the many different challenges like housing, drugs, and mental health issues the people on our streets are facing, and then try and operate each of these housing units as a special-purpose single-issue services centre.

It should be more cost-efficient, and make staffing easier, as many of the employees would need only one or two skill sets.

The homeless need temporary and long-term housing, ideally in a more rural setting, complete with a fence and security system to make sure everybody is safe.

The Vernon cadet camp is a perfect facility for such use as a short and longer-term solution, and would have very little additional costs to taxpayers. The housing components are ‘full service’ and the military has all the resources, expertise, and disciplines needed to provide security.  

Getting these people off the streets will liberate the RCMP to pursue another huge problem, the drug dealers.

We also have to enforce an immediate 10-year moratorium on all development while we regain control of our city, and a byelection, to elect a city council with the credibility and commitment to restore law order and good government.

Andy Thomsen, Kelowna