A ceremonial ground breaking for the new fire hall was held in November. Town councillors, staff, firefighters and representatives of the Osoyoos Indian Band and several community groups turned out for the event. The fire hall is going ahead following a referendum a year earlier. (Richard McGuire photo)
Construction on a new fire hall for the Town of Osoyoos, the deal to find a new buyer for the Mount Baldy Ski Area falling apart and concerns over numerous break and enters into regional wineries made headlines in November.
Construction on a beautiful and modern fire hall for the Town of Osoyoos started in November and had longtime Fire Chief Rick Jones, Mayor Sue McKortoff and a lot of local residents very happy.
The new state-of-the-art fire hall, complete with on-site training centre, is expected to open for business in November or December of 2016, said McKortoff at the official groundbreaking ceremony held at the site on 74th Avenue, about 200 metres west of Hwy. 97.
“This is a really great day for Osoyoos, for the town, for the fire department, for the Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) and for the Osoyoos Rural Fire Protection Society,” said McKortoff. “I think it has taken 10 years to get this organized and off the ground … it’s very exciting.”
The Osoyoos Fire Department provides fire protection services to all residents of the Town of Osoyoos, but also has long-term working arrangements with the OIB and Osoyoos Rural Fire Protection Society.
Greyback was awarded the $5.7 million tender to complete construction of the new fire hall.
McKortoff said awarding the contract and holding a groundbreaking ceremony is exciting, but that won’t compare to what will happen a year from now once construction is completed.
“Next year around this time, we will be holding a formal ceremony where we will all return to celebrate having our new fire hall ready to open,” she said. “It will be a treat.’
Local residents voted overwhelmingly in favour of borrowing $5.9 million to pay for the new fire hall during a public referendum held in conjunction with the last municipal election.
For Fire Chief Rick Jones, the groundbreaking ceremony marks one of his proudest moments since he first joined the local fire department as a volunteer 33 years ago.
Being able to move out of an old, cramped building into a new, modern fire hall that will feature a fully equipped training centre is going to improve safety and morale and help recruit new volunteers for the Osoyoos Fire Department, said Jones.
“The biggest thing is it will be safer for the firefighters,” he said. “We’ve had to work out of very cramped quarters for many years. Moving into a new hall is really going to improve morale and I have no doubt it will also help recruit a lot of new guys who are going to be able to do all of their training right here on site.”
A ski season for 2015-16 at Mount Baldy Ski Resort was declared unlikely when negotiations with a potential buyer became deadlocked.
Baldy Capital Corporation, the potential buyer, recently opened an office in Osoyoos and announced plans to market the resort, but its purchase offer wasn’t acceptable to the receiver, G. Powroznik Group Inc., or the secured creditor, Stark BC Venture LLC.
Fred Johnston, president of Baldy Capital Corporation, had maintained an interim agreement would allow his company to operate the resort, as it did early in 2015, until a purchase could be completed.
However, it was revealed that the insurance company would not insure the resort for the coming year “so long as the receiver is still in place as of Dec. 1, 2015.”
This means, he said, that ownership and operation “are now inextricably linked.”
Baldy Capital Corporation made a last-ditch “compromise” proposal to break the deadlock with a “drop-dead” deadline for acceptance in late November.
Johnston said the secured creditor rejected it that day.
“We got a message from the secured creditor’s lawyer rejecting our proposal,” Johnston said. “As we had indicated there will be no further negotiations without adding anything to it. We’re not changing it, it was take it or leave it and they left it.”
“Under no circumstances are we willing to do what we did last season, which is to operate it and make it look better and then have the receiver toss us aside and go and market it to somebody else,” said Johnston. “That will not happen again.”
Gary Powroznik, the receiver, however, maintained that Baldy Capital Corporation made a commitment to the secured creditor to make an offer acceptable to the receiver by Jan. 30, 2015 and complete by May 15, 2015.
“As there was no acceptable offer, the operating agreement ended on April 30, 2015,” Powroznik’s company G-Force Group said in a statement.
Oliver winery owners were very frustrated and forced to hire private security after thieves once again broke into at least five different wineries in the area around Black Sage Road.
The break-ins have been an ongoing problem all summer, with the crooks going back to the same locations again and again, in some cases making off with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise.
John Pullen, of Church and State Wines, says Church and State was broken into four times since June. They’ve lost $100,000 worth of tools, equipment, cash, electronics, even a tractor, and neither their security system nor the police have been able to stop it.
Glenn Fawcett, the president of Black Hills Estate Winery, says Black Hills was recently hit twice in a two-week span. In similar smash-and-grab operations, the thieves broke a window and stole cash and electronics, and tried to make off with a safe.
“Whoever’s doing this knows that patrol is minimal during that time, and there’s a very good chance that no one is going to get there to catch them.”
“They’re capitalizing on the weakness of the police presence in the evening in the South Okanagan,” Fawcett added.
Signatures started piling up asking B.C. Attorney General Suzanne Anton to provide more funding to increase police resources for the RCMP across the South Okanagan.
As of Nov. 23, 254 people had added their names to the online petition, which was started by Glenn Fawcett, the president of Black Hills Estate Winery in Oliver.
Fawcett and other winery owners have recently been forced to hire private security at their businesses as rates of theft and break-and-enters in the South Okanagan have spiked dramatically.
Fawcett said he started the petition to give a stronger voice to South Okanagan residents.
Everyone from Oliver and Osoyoos business owners and residents to tourists from Calgary have added their names and their frustration and sense of helplessness is palpable, he said.
“If you read the comments on that survey, if you scroll through all it, it’s amazing how many other people are affected by [crime],” Fawcett said. “I just keep going through their comments. It’s mind-boggling how many people in the area have been affected.”
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
Several hundred people again packed into the Sonora Community Centre for the annual Remembrance Day service on Nov. 11. (Richard McGuire file photo)
