City dealt crush defeat

J.P. Squire 2009-08-13 Kelowna Daily Courier:

SNC Lavalin won‘t budge, so a desperate city council will plead with the premier to save the Okanagan Lake bridge pontoons. In the latest wrinkle, SNC project engineer Tom Tasaka wrote the city late Tuesday that his company was unable to extend the deadline for a pontoon proposal to Sept. 21 from Aug. 17 “for both technical and business reasons.” City councillors had been advised to get more public input via a second alternate approval process because, at the last minute, the pontoon location was shifted south of Kelowna Yacht Club. Only 3,000 opposed the public pier, public boat moorage and a breakwater for the marina during the first AAP. Late Tuesday, council decided not to proceed with the second AAP, but instructed Mayor Sharon Shepherd to plead with Premier Gordon Campbell to save the 10 remaining pontoons and extend the deadline for their disposal. In an interview Wednesday, Tasaka said his original deadline for a city decision was in May, and “we already have the wheels in motion to break up the 10 remaining pontoons,” starting next week. “I‘m not criticizing the approval process because that is absolutely necessary, but it just didn‘t have time. We‘ll get started on that right away, and we‘ll recycle the concrete for roadway base material as gravel,” he said.

The dismantling process at the graving dock on Westside Road won‘t be completed until next spring, possibly early summer to meet a provincial deadline for completing the project. Each pontoon has about 1,000 cubic yards of material. Two pontoons have already been done. “I‘m really disappointed this didn‘t work out because I thought it would be quite an asset to the community in the long term. It‘s frustrating. I don‘t blame the City of Kelowna at all because they tried their best,” said Tasaka. The two sides tried to complete the design and the approval process concurrently, so that when the design was done, the approval was in place, he said. “During the design – and this happens all the time – there are refinements, so the information we gave out to the public at the start of the AAP process changed a bit. To me, I don‘t think it was significant, but that might not be seen by some of the people. So I can understand the city‘s position,” he said. “I know the city wanted to do that. There‘s no question; we were on the same page. It‘s just unfortunate.”

Shepherd said council is disappointed it wasn‘t able to meet the original deadline. “It was an extremely tight timeline where design and regulatory approvals had to run simultaneously,” she said. “The detailed design process indicated challenges late last week requiring significant changes to the initial concept plan. This is typical of any planning process. “Committed to an open and transparent process, both city council and our legal counsel recommended a second alternate approval process that would have taken up to six weeks to complete.”