-District municipality model suggested as another possible governance option-

OSOYOOS TIMES-February 20, 2008-

By Chad IngramrnOsoyoos Times

Osoyoos town councillors challenged a number of ideas surrounding the future of regional governance in the Okanagan Valley at a meeting with a consultant representing the Okanagan Similkameen Valley Governance Working Committee on Feb. 13.
The councillors, along with members of town staff and Regional District Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) Area A Director Mark Pendergraft, were joined in council chambers by committee consultant Allan Neilson-Welch, who said he was seeking the individual input of councillors as opposed to an official town position.
Neilson-Welch said his job was to record council's feedback and include it in the report he will be submitting to the governance working committee later this month.
The 12-member committee, dedicated to exploring new systems for improved regional governance in the valley, is comprised of four representatives from each of the three Okanagan regional districts.
Council was introduced to a chart showing issues that must be managed on an area-wide basis and issues that would benefit from an area-wide approach.
We (compiled this list) two weeks ago, said Mayor John Slater, who is also a member of the governance working committee. These are the ones we know we can do or should be doing.rnTransportation, water quality and air quality appeared in the first category, along with other issues such as emergency preparedness, economic development and regional growth management.
Coun. Allan Carswell took issue with the fact that climate change also appeared in this category.
Part of it is a bit of a conceptual problem, Carswell said. This is a provincial issue. I don't know why it's even on this list.
Carswell wanted to know why, with climate change already being dealt with at federal and provincial levels, it needed to be dealt with again at yet another level of government.
Coun. Ted Cronmiller said that as far as economic development and regional growth management are concerned, he doesn't want to see a competition develop between smaller communities and the regional governments.
We want our piece of the pie, Cronmiller said.
He and Coun. Dick Flintoft spoke to the importance of municipal governments maintaining their autonomy no matter what changes may happen in the valley's regional governments.
Coun. Stu Wells said that the second category on the list, issues that would benefit from an area-wide approach, should be renamed.
The 'would benefit' should be 'could benefit,' Wells said, stressing there was no way to guarantee that issues such as parks and trails, affordable housing and heritage programs would in fact be better taken care of under valley-wide attention.
Slater agreed this was a misnomer that should be corrected.
A Jan. 31 meeting of the governance working committee saw members draw up eight guiding principles that they said should be used when looking at regional governance changes in the valley. These include recognizing the diversity of the valley's communities and the need to protect agricultural land.
Carswell questioned how the third principal, which suggests that a new governance system not result in the creation of a new level of government, and the eighth principle, which says the desirability of direct elector input in determining representation in a regional model should be recognized, are compatible.
That apparent contradiction has been raised before, so I've certainly made a note of it, Neilson-Welch said.
A single regional district, one that would merge the RDOS with Regional District Central Okanagan (RDCO) and Regional District North Okanagan (RDNO), is still being offered as one option for a new form of regional governance in the Okanagan.
The other two options are an inter-regional alliance and an inter-regional authority model.
Under the alliance option, the three districts would remain in place with an inter-regional body created to address valley-wide issues. Under the authority option, the three districts would again remain in place with a number of small, specific-purpose committees created to address issues that affect the whole valley.
I think there's a whole option that's been missed, Wells said, explaining he'd like to have seen the possibility of a district municipality, such as the system set up in Lake Country.
In district municipalities, rural areas surrounding a municipality are controlled by that municipality.
Is regional government broken? I think it is to a degree, Wells said. Rural (Osoyoos) people have to deal with Penticton. I think this omission is a serious flaw.
Wells did add that of the three options he was most supportive of the third, citing the Okanagan Basin Water Board as an example of an already existent special-purpose authority.
I think it needs to be flushed out a little more, Wells said.
Pointing out that the Okanagan region has 3 MPs and 7 MLAs, Carswell questioned why it wouldn't be better to give provincial representatives subsidiary powers, rather than redesign regional governance. He also pointed out what he said was a major hole in the process “ the involvement of the valley's First Nations bands.
What about the (Okanagan Nation Alliance)? Carswell asked. Where are they?
Working with the bands was not part of my round of consultations, Neilson-Welch said. I'm sure that's something the commission will be looking into.
Neilson-Welch said he is one of a number of consultants working on the governance review and that it was his job to do the road show – conferencing with the valley's municipal councils.
Before the Osoyoos meeting, he'd met with councils in Kelowna, Westside, Peachland and Lake Country.
The responses of councillors in those communities were similar to their Osoyoos counterparts, he said.
Before his mandate is up at the end of the month, Neilson-Welch will also visit Keremeos, Princeton, Summerland, Oliver, Enderby, Spallumcheen, Coldstream, Lumby, Vernon, Armstrong and the boards of the three regional districts.
He is scheduled to submit his final report to the governance working committee at a Feb. 27 meeting at the RDNO office in Coldstream.
Neilson-Welch's work is being funded by the provincial government through the Ministry of Community Services, which is performing a regional governance review of the Okanagan Valley.
The review was requested by Peachland Mayor Graham Reid in a letter to Community Services Minister Ida Chong last summer. Reid proposed that a single, amalgamated regional district for the valley would better manage water quality, air quality and transportation.
The rural directors of the RDOS have made it clear they strongly oppose the idea of an amalgamated district, suggesting it would ignore the valley's rural communities.