Mayor defends civic complex

By Richard Rolke - Vernon Morning Star - January 04, 2008

Vernon’s mayor stands firmly behind plans for a new civic complex despite significant community opposition. On Jan. 26, a referendum will be held asking residents to approve the borrowing of $30 million over 25 years for construction of a civic building. “We need as a city, more room for staff and for the RCMP,” said Mayor Wayne Lippert. “We are going to need to either build, buy or lease space. We are trying to look at those needs.”The facility — which would be constructed between city hall and the museum — would also include space for a 30,000-square-foot library, as well as possibly an art gallery. Lippert points out that Okanagan Regional Library has committed $9 million towards the project.

“From a business sense, there’s good value for the dollar,” he said of placing various uses under one roof. However, there’s been significant criticism of the project, with some residents saying the site is wrong and any redevelopment downtown should have waited until the city’s official community plan review is completed. A furor erupted during the summer when the city attempted to garner public approval through an alternate approval process instead of going to referendum. With 6,000 names on a petition, the city’s plans to borrow funds were blocked. Lippert says the alternate approval process was selected because of tight timelines to access government grants. But he admits the city fumbled the issue.

“We needed to do a better job to get information out there so people understood the process we were going through.” Lippert won’t comment on whether he thinks some of the criticism directed towards council has been unfair. “The public will think what it wants to think. We need to get information out to the public and we haven’t done a good enough job on on that,” he said. But the civic complex aside, Lippert is proud of the ongoing OCP review and how it’s involved residents. “We’ve tried to get as much input as possible,” he said. The new OCP will be adopted in June, and Lippert says that while there will be a focus on development, it will also look at the environment and making neighbourhoods more active by getting vehicles off the roads. “There are some developers who liked the old way of doing things but this council hasn’t done that,” he said.The last 12 months also saw an increased focus on social issues such as affordable housing and working with non-profit groups to establish a homeless shelter.

“This is our city, a community and a society,” said Lippert, adding, though, that city hall can’t be the answer to all social problems. “I don’t want to be seen as giving hand-outs. I want to give them an opportunity to change situations so people can help themselves.” One step council took in 2007 was to hire more bylaw enforcement officers, partly to deal with safety concerns downtown.“We’ve put a lot of effort into getting downtown people-friendly again and I’m proud of that. All I heard before was complaints about drug dealers and hookers,” he said. Lippert has special praise for the efforts taken by the bylaw enforcement department, the RCMP, the Downtown Vernon Association and the Safe Communities Unit.But Lippert admits there have been some concerns about bylaw officers possibly being too vigorous about their jobs.“They need to uphold the bylaws but I would like them to be ambassadors,” he said.

Lippert was first elected in 2005 and his term comes to an end with next November’s civic election.“There’s a lot of things I’d like to see move forward,” he said.“I haven’t made up my mind yet but I’d like another term as mayor.”