Dear
Mayor Findlator and the DWK Council
Members: 091207
First, I would like to thank you
for doing some hard work over the past year. It is not easy, and it
clearly takes a toll on one’s personal life when you are in the “public life!”
Now having said that sincerely,
and in my opinion, I wish to inform you that one of your endeavours is not
being completed with the unity of our community in mind. This very fact
that you are very well aware of (and was played out in Winfield recently), is
irresponsible, uncaring and lacking in leadership.
I
am certain that the people who elected you to council to represent them would
not have voted for you if they knew that you would divide our community with
such polarity. Community division is a bad thing that places one or more
areas against the other. It makes them unproductive, resentful and unfavourable
to you for re-election. If there is some “Gain to be had” for someone by
ignoring:
1. Those who pay taxes to DWK and
therefore your wages.
2. Those who own businesses in the
“Westbank Town” who must now participate in paying their taxes with reduced
customers walking into their businesses. Many of these customers have
taken their purchasing power to stores that do not contribute to the tax base
for the DWK.
3. The pioneers of Westbank who
physically built this community (farm irrigation from the mountain
lakes). This irrigation system is the water that made the “Money” that
gave us this community that we have today. For this sweaty, hard work and
everything else that went into Westbank each year since its inception, some
recognition is most deserving to each of these families who are largely
deceased today. Some of their names appear on signs today, naming some of
our streets and roads.
4. To overlook these facts for the
present day benefit going to some business force or other, is insensitive,
disrespectful and disgraceful. It appears to me and very, many others,
that the so-called “voter opinion” for our community’s future name, which was
turned into a vote status by your council, did not include many people who were
not eligible to vote, and they were told it is an opinion poll not a final
vote. It did not include the young people of our community either, and in
case you forgot, they matter too. As a past Co-ordinator of the Westside
Community Policing Office, I personally did much of the footwork to set up the
current Restorative Justice Program in our Community. I wish to tell you that
every time you exclude the young people from our community, and now the OCP,
you provide them with one more legitimate reason that they do not matter.
I also wish to tell you that I have personally witnessed some young people in
our community who have their heads very well organized and are able to speak
explicitly and very powerfully. In fact, I would love to attend a debate
between these young people and your council. As a side note, some of
these young people will be eligible to sit on council as young adults, such as
the most recently elected Kelowna City Council Member. From personal
observation, if a young Grade 12 graduate does run for a seat on the next
council, I will not be surprised, and I will personally help them. It is
also my opinion, and that of many others, that the Mayor and his council needs
to be unseated, if for nothing else, to undo some damage and to unify our
community at large.
Now, I could go on here listing many more items, but your evening
consciences will tell you most of them. I wish only to say shame on you
for not recognizing the wishes of a major portion of Westbank’s tax payers by
refusing to create a Historic Westbank in the V4T area. These people have been
bringing their dissatisfaction to your attention for over a year. Stand up to
represent the people who placed you in office. Also to remind you about
the vote that placed each of you in office, the Westbank area was the Lion’s
share of the vote count upon which you were elected. Check the numbers on the record. Westbank is part of this District too.
This insult to Westbank has gone on long enough.
I have lived and paid taxes to our community, and I have made my living
here since 1992.
I ask you to make this request part of our OCP without fail. Thank you.
Keith Martin
