Building a mystery

By Vernon Daily Courier staff Monday Sep. 25 http://www.dailycourier.ca/
An agenda item for the next public meeting of the Greater Vernon Servicescommmission is being met with more than a little secrecy. A park’s department report regarding the acquisition of a mobile home at Paddlewheel Park was included in the agenda for the Sept. 28 meeting. The report recommends that Greater Vernon Services advise the Okanagan Landing Community Association to tell the mobile home’s owners to put the home on the market because it must be removed from the park. The trailer in question is believed to be the mobile home that once was home to the park’s caretaker. Further, if the mobile home could not be sold, staff were instructed to purchase the trailer for a certain sum subject to the approval of the Regional District of the North Okanagan. The mobile home would be paid for out of the municipal insurance reserve fund. If Greater Vernon Services was unable to sell the trailer, the recommendation was that it be demolished. When asked about the item, Greater Vernon Services chair and Coldstream mayor Gary Corner said that the issue should not have been included in the agenda package. He said the information was not going to be made public until the Oct. 12 meeting at the earliest and he would not comment on it. “I cannot comment because it’s in camera,” he said. Similarly members of the Okanagan Landing Community Association would not discuss the acquisition of the mobile home, saying that the matter would be discussed at a general meeting sometime this month. One association member did suggest that the mobile home acquisition had something to do with the expansion of the Paddlewheel parking lot. Paddlewheel Park is owned by the Okanagan Landing Community Association which purchased the land in 1971. Greater Vernon Services leases a portion of the property from the association in exchange for tax relief. Vernon mayor Wayne Lippert, who sits on the Greater Vernon Services commission, said on Sunday that he had yet to review the agenda and was not familiar with the issue. He said if the mobile home acquisition was supposed to be in camera it would fall under the categories of either land issues, legal issues or labour issues. “I think if it is in camera it means someone in Greater Vernon Services is likely to hear about it,” he said.