Director Pans Riding Change

Posted on 3/27/2015 by Pete McIntyre 107.5 KISSFM

Proposed Redistribution Map.

The political rep for the Swan Lake area north of Vernon doesn't support an idea to switch his area into the Shuswap provincial riding. Swan Lake is currently in the Vernon Monashee riding, and involves about two thousand residents. The BC Boundaries Commission says the change would balance the populations between the two ridings, with Vernon Monashee currently the most populated in the region, and Shuswap the second smallest. "To better balance the population in this area we propose to move the boundary between Vernon-Monashee and Shuswap south to include Swan Lake in the Shuswap electoral district. The electoral district boundary will follow the Vernon municipal boundary around Swan Lake and Silver Star Foothills to the Spallumcheen municipal boundary," says the commission report. Bob Fleming, the regional district director for BX-Swan Lake, says it could make it difficult for local government. "The electoral areas, B and C, are part of Greater Vernon and we share a bunch of services, so we are linked to that, so if we're dealing with parks or water, then we're dealing provincially with one representative for that, and it would be odd to be dealing with two," Fleming tells Kiss FM. Fleming says it would cause a split in the local communities. "It's just an odd circumstance and I don't know if they've considered that or not, if they recognize we share services and those services have provincial influence and we really should be dealing with one representative from the provincial government." He says he plans to speak against the change, adding it will be a topic for the regional district board. We are going to see this at the board really soon. I will be looking for what their time frame is and is there is a consultation period. The changes are proposed to take effect in time for the 2017 B.C. election.
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http://bc-ebc.ca/reports
http://bc-ebc.ca/docs/reports/BC-EBC_Preliminary_Report-March_26,_2015.pdf

Maps of Proposed changes at:
http://bc-ebc.ca/maps/proposed%20electoral%20districts/high%20resolution/Vernon-Monashee.pdf

http://bc-ebc.ca/maps/proposed%20electoral%20districts/high%20resolution/Shuswap.pdf

http://bc-ebc.ca/maps/proposed%20regions/high%20resolution/Okanagan%20Shuswap.pdf