The North Okanagan Natural Areas Preservation Committee (NONAP) would like to correct the impression that Richard Rolke’s article on page A7 of The Morning Star, Friday, August 12, has made. This has to do with recent moves to develop the Commonage area. Mr. Rolke’s article begins: “Attempts to prevent future development in the Commonage aren’t being embraced at city hall.”
We are not trying to prevent future development in the Commonage. NONAP made a presentation to council on August 8 saying: “We are asking that council direct that a Commonage Area Plan be developed that would eventually be incorporated into Vernon’s Official Community Plan (OCP).”
This area plan would include input from private property owners, not be imposed upon them. We asked that the city “appoint a steering committee to oversee the process.”
Our goals are not to prevent future development or take away the rights of individual private property owners. We are a citizens committee wanting to work with the city, private property owners, the appropriate government agencies, environmental professional, and water resource management personnel to promote sustainable development of the city’s remaining natural areas, in accordance with the Official Community Plan.
We want to see the previous regional district zoning updated to city zoning in compliance with OCP land use designations. This would hopefully preclude any future applications for variances based on lot averaging. In addition, it would provide owners of lands, or potential buyers of lands, who are considering annexation into the City of Vernon with a land use plan developed by the city and its citizens in accordance with OCP and RGS (Regional Growth Strategy) values. This would create a shift from developer driven use of our hillsides to a policy based on the greater good of all members of our community.
In the last paragraph of Mr. Rolke’s article he quotes Mary-Jo O’Keefe as saying: “The public had an opportunity to purchase the property and the public decided at the time it didn’t have enough value to buy. Now, we’re being told it has value, but now it’s private land.” She is referring to the approximately 2,200 acres of lands on the Commonage previously and privately owned by Pike Anderson and family and sold in August, 2001.
In fact the public were greatly saddened by the lost opportunity to purchase the area for parkland. Mr. Stan Field, then Chairman of NORD, had negotiated a tentative agreement with the Andersons, City of Vernon, Coldstream and NORD to purchase the property.
However, the deal fell through because another purchaser acquired the land, not because the public deemed the land did not have value. On Dec. 2, 2004, these lands were annexed by the City of Vernon and, afterwards, about half this property was sold.
Certainly, property owners have rights and so does nature, and the Citizens of Vernon, who spent a great deal of time providing input into the 2008 OCP and recently adopted RGS (Regional Growth Strategy).
Robyn Thornton
Vernon
