Vernon council members had planned to tour a handful of high-priority Okanagan Lake access points ahead of Monday’s meetings but deferred a decision on the rights-of-way due to a liability hitch.
Council members had agreed to visit six right-of-way accesses (listed below) before the May 10 meeting, when they were to review recent updates made to the city’s 2018 lake access plan. However, the tour and discussion was put back two weeks, to give council time to have a liability insurance question clarified.
Updated April 27, the original plan highlighted 45 accesses the city was given control of by the Ministry of Transportation in 1993. Historically, these sites had been used to provide livestock access to water and to transport logs from the water to the mill. These days they’re mainly used for recreation.
In 2005, the city set out to improve access to the using these rights-of-way.
Today, five sites are fully developed and used by the public: Beachcomber Bay Road, Foster Road, Kennedy Road, Whitepoint Road and Delcliffe Road. Three more sites have been given minor improvements, with signage and garbage cans put in place at 9003 Peters Road, 9689 Eastside Road and 8396 Tronson Road.
One new access site has been added since 2018, located along the 9000 block of Eastside Road.
Fifteen lake accesses are well suited to be fully developed for recreation, the report states.
“This means they should have parking, pedestrian access (footpaths or stairs, if required), and site furniture at the waterfront to accommodate the public.”
Council was looking to move forward on one of the access points (7300 Tronson Road), with a recommendation still on the table to develop the site at the same time as the Pumphouse Park or before 2023. That decision will be revisited at a later date.
All six of the property access points council currently has eyes on are included in the list of 15 deemed ideal for recreation. Those six accesses are located at:
• 7806 Tronson Rd. (between 7796 and 7814 Tronson Rd.)
• 7700 Tronson Rd. (between 7688 and 7716 Tronson Rd.)
• 7300 Tronson Rd. (between 7292 and 7304 Tronson Rd.)
• 8835 Okanagan Landing Rd. (between 8829 and 8839 Okanagan Landing Rd.)
• 9499 Eastside Rd. (between 9797 and 9501 Eastside Rd.)
• 114 Russell Rd. (between 110 and 111 Russell Rd.)
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