By Roy Wood, Special to the Times Chronicle

Volunteers are working hard on the new Safe Boating Station at the Osoyoos Marina, but RCMP Sgt. Jason Bayda isn’t sure when the life-jacket supply facility will be up and running.

As part of his quarterly report to town council, the detachment commander said the building is proceeding well and an artist has been commissioned to paint a mural on one of the walls once it is complete. Most of the volunteers are from the local Rotary chapter.

The station will provide free lifejackets to anyone who needs them. The borrowing will be on the “honour system,” said Bayda. He encouraged users to make sure they select the right size and then return them when they are done.

The initiative is similar to the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue’s Kids Don’t Float program at dozens of marinas across the province. However, Bayda wants to market to adults as well, and offer adult-sized personal flotation devices as the majority of fatalities on Osoyoos Lake are adult drownings, he added.

“What I’m finding is it’s mostly adults that don’t have their life jackets on,” he said. “As an adult we often think ‘well, I can swim, maybe my child can’t,’ so we’re more concerned about our children and we provide them with a life jacket and not ourselves.”

He told council a key aim of the free lifejacket program is to provide safety for kids at the beach. He pointed out that while most drowning deaths among adults occur on the lake, children are in more danger on busy beaches, where they can easily wander away from their parents.

Among the other highlights of Bayda’s quarterly crime stats report: 

  • Total calls service to the Osoyoos detachment for the first six months of the year are up by six per cent over last year from 839 to 889; 
  • Year-to-date callouts for violent crimes have declined by six percent for the first half of the year; 
  • The property crime increase of 25 per cent is in line with similar increases all across the region; 
  • Auto thefts are up substantially from four to 17. The most popular targets are Ford pickups and they are most commonly stolen to be used in further thefts in other jurisdictions. Two thirds of the stolen vehicles were recovered; 
  • Sex offenses have declined dramatically from 24 to seven. None of these are stranger on stranger. “By that I mean we don’t have a sexual predator out there dragging people into the bushes.” Two of the incidents involved homeless people changing clothes outside; 
  • Break-and-enter offenses against businesses declined from 11 to six and from one to zero against homes; 
  • Thefts from vehicles dropped by half from 16 to eight, which Mayor Sue McKortoff said may well have been a result of Bayda’s efforts to encourage people to lock their cars.

Bayda was asked about golf carts being driven on public roads. The issue was raised at a recent meeting of council by a resident who reported them being driven in the tourist/camping areas along Lakeshore Drive and in the subdivision adjacent to the Osoyoos Golf Club.

Bayda said there are some jurisdictions in the province which allow vehicles similar to golf carts on their streets, but with specific safety requirements, like seatbelts and lights. For them to be allowed, the town would need to pass a bylaw, he said. “We don’t have a bylaw . . . So, to answer the question of whether you can drive them on our streets, no you can’t.”