To the editor:
On Feb. 28 we attended a public meeting at the Capital News Centre with regards to the building of a road, called the South Perimeter Road or SPR, that starts at the top of Gordon Road in the Ponds community and ends at Stewart Road on the benches. It passes south of the Ponds development and Crawford Estates.
In order to accelerate the start of the SPR city council has re-prioritized all the previously made plans to make improvements to the existing northbound traffic corridors. This means no traffic or safety improvements will be done to Chute Lake Road, Gordon and Lakeshore for many years. These improvements would have included traffic lights at Okaview and Chute Lake Road and widening the bridges over Bellevue Creek on Lakeshore and Gordon Roads.
I believe that a good number of the people attending the presentation have very serious reservations with this plan. We feel that it is more important to go back to previous priorities than building a road that basically goes to nowhere. However, the city has determined to bend to the will of developers and build a road that benefits the few rather than stay to their original priorities which would benefit the many.
By the way, if you think that this is only an upper Mission problem, think again. This project is going ahead by way of the Alternative Approval Process (AAP) rather than by a referendum, meaning if you don’t sign the AAP elector response form, you are assumed to have approved the project.
If you are opposed you must sign the form and deliver to city hall by March 16, 2018. In order to stop this we would have to gather over 10,000 elector objection signatures (10 per cent of Kelowna taxpayers). So if something goes wrong and the city cannot collect enough future Development Cost Charges from developers within the Southwest Mission sector, every home owner in Kelowna will see it on their taxes. Keep this in mind for the next municipal election.
Incidentally, I didn’t see any council member at CNC.
Greg Prichard, Kettle Valley