Mayor apologizes for referendum gaffe

By John MoorhouseTuesday, January 23, 2007, http://www.pentictonherald.ca/article_2889.php

Mayor Jake Kimberley has apologized for suggesting there was a guaranteed price for the South Okanagan Event Centre prior to last September's referendum.However, he doubts that had a significant impact on the vote results.In a letter to local media outlets, signed by Kimberley and city administrator Leo den Boer, they acknowledged that references in campaign literature to "guaranteed maximum price" for the event centre should have been qualified or deleted."For this we apologize," the letter stated.The lengthy letter outlined the process involved in the city's decision to choose Giffels Partersnhip Solutions to design and build the event centre.

The referendum to borrow $36 million for what was then dubbed as a $56.1-million event centre project, gained support from more than 80 per cent of those who cast ballots. Costs later jumped to $73.6 million by the time a contract with Giffels was signed on Dec. 21."Hindsight is the greatest teacher of all," Kimberley said in an interview Monday. "Had we reviewed that document (today) prior to circulating it, we would probably change the wording and make it more applicable to the situation we were in at that time."

The mayor said he believes the biggest influence in the referendum campaign was provincial government approval of $40 million in casino revenues for the project announced in late August, as well as the earlier $9.7-million provincial grant. This allowed the city to hold the tax increase for the event centre at two per cent, phased in over three years.Kimberley said if council had ordered another referendum on the issue, the vote results would likely have been closer, but it would have also resulted in another three or four-month delay with construction costs going even higher.The mayor claimed if the city had opted for an earlier contract with Global Entertainment Corp., without bothering with a request for qualifications from other companies, that casino money might not have been available.

He noted negotiations for the casino funding took six months to complete."The fact that we took time to do this and put it together, we accommodated in the six months of the negotiating process (with the provincial government) $40 million of lottery money to pay the mortgage," he said.The city applied for the casino revenues in February and didn't receive final approval from Victoria until August.Jack Kler, the city's director of corporate services, said one of the main reasons the province approved the funding was the strength of the proposal by Giffels and its added focus on use of the event centre for conventions and trade shows.He added it likely would have been much tougher to acquire the casino money if a contract had already been signed."It would have been a much tougher sell but I don't know if the door would have been actually closed in our face," he said. "I've been in government long enough to know that everything is grey - there's no black and white."

In their letter, Kimberley and den Boer said reaching an agreement on the South Okanagan Event Centre "legacy project" was unlikely without creating at least some controversy."While our capital expenditure belt will be tightened for three years - which is to be expected with a project this size - beyond that, our financial commitment to the SOEC will in no way impact this community's ability to finance other major projects as it sees fit," they stated."While detractors will come and go along with the newspaper headlines, the city now intends to focus its efforts on making the SOEC a reality."