Councillor fires back at Lake Country

by Wayne Moore -Mar 4, 2008 CASTANET

Kelowna City Councillor, Brian Given, is tired of watching his city attacked by neighbouring communities. In response to verbal attacks by Lake Country Mayor, James Baker, over a proposed jail at the north end of Kelowna, Given says the City of Kelowna needs to stand up and defend itself. Baker has made public statements stating that placing a jail at the edge of Lake Country is 'dumping an offensive and unwanted landuse in his community by the province and Kelowna.' "I was hoping the mayor (Sharon Shepherd) might step up and defend Kelowna's position on this. We've been taking it on the chin in a number of ways," says Given. "The City of Kelowna is a pretty generous municipality. We fund most of the Regional District initiatives."

Given says a number of those initiatives have directly benefited the District of Lake Country. "We did agree to put about a half million dollars of the transit money into Lake Country for their transit hub even though they had not agreed to be part of the transit position before. That money was given up by the other partners with Kelowna being the biggest member." While he doesn't want to get into a war of words in the media, Given does think Kelowna needs to set the record straight. "Let's not forget, the City of Kelowna put in a lot of time and effort into this process 12 years ago. In fact, the area hasn't changed all that much. He (Baker) made comment to that as well." Given adds prisoners are being housed in the RCMP jail in Kelowna, some of whom are from Lake Country and Westside, and to the best of his knowledge, the City is not being compensated. "Every time that happens we have to send them to Kamloops then bring them back here. Somebody is paying for that. We're paying for that."