Mixed messages

Published: April 21, 2009 7:00 PM Richard Rolke - Vernon Morning Star

It was rather interesting to watch Mayor Wayne Lippert spring to the defence of Greater Vernon’s water utility last week. During a meeting of the North Okanagan Regional District, rural Lumby director Rick Fairbairn pushed for a vote on water matters because some of his residents are served by the utility and pay the rates the rest of Greater Vernon does. Lippert strongly disagreed. “I don’t see the need for it,” he said in an interview after the meeting. “People seem to look at their own turf and not as it being a utility. The utility is working fine and should be left alone.”

But if Lippert is right and the utility is working so well, why has the city been trying get out of water distribution for more than a year? In a March 2008 article, Lippert outlined the reasons why the city felt the need to put NORD on official withdrawal notice. “We’ve been having issues with water. We’ve been trying to make the system work better,” he said. Given that the city and NORD continue to negotiate possible withdrawal, how does Lippert reconcile last week’s strong endorsement of the utility with his comments of a year ago? In opposing a vote for rural Lumby, Lippert also suggested that Fairbairn was just considering his own rural turf and not the broader picture.

But consider the city’s claims for withdrawal — a lack of co-ordination of capital and replacement projects between NORD and Vernon, and a lack of accountability to water customers in the city. How is it that Lippert can so easily demand that his residents’ interests be a priority, but then turn around and dismiss an elected official who is simply attempting to do the same thing?

Now I should point out that I am currently undecided on Fairbairn actually having voting authority at the utility. Yes he has residents who are paying water bills towards costly infrastructure upgrades (most of which are in his area), and taxation should come with representation. But there’s been nothing stopping Fairbairn from attending meetings and speaking his mind on behalf of his citizens. Rural Lumby also wasn’t one of the signatories to the bylaw that created the utility so a lengthy legal process is required to reverse that, and there’s a huge difference between the thousands of customers in the four Greater Vernon jurisdictions and the 25 to 30 properties located in Whitevale. Ultimately, though, the regional district is going to investigate whether the utility’s voting structure should be expanded to include areas such as rural Lumby or Spallumcheen, which also taps into Greater Vernon water for some properties. But for there to be some sort of meaningful outcome to the entire process, it may help if Vernon clarifies the mixed messages it’s sending out.