Image Credit: YOUTUBE

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It was another slick video produced at taxpayer expense, featuring of course Colin Basran… oops sorry, heh heh, bad habit. I mean featuring, of course, Mayor Tom Dyas. Also, that just sounds wrong because it was Tom Dyas, you’ll recall, who attacked Basran and the city for these blatant puff pieces, but I digress…. More on hypocrisy later.

Tom, or an AI version of Tom, who can really be sure, did his best impression of a deer staring at headlights while explaining that the city bought another 1.8 acres of waterfront land. He sounded like he was hyping the kids for a week-long summer vacation minivan trip to Saskatchewan.

Isn’t that wonderful everyone?

Marshall Jones, managing editor

The city communications department teased that with a YouTube release. It got picked up by a few news orgs who ran with it and that was the news, that was the story. Waterfront parkland purchase. Nope, no holes in this story at all.

The next day the city issued the press release. Headline: 1.8-acre waterfront lot at the mouth of Mission Creek acquired for a new destination park. Release: 350 words. The cost: Buried in the second last paragraph.

EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS. FOR 1.8 ACRES.

You gotta pay attention to this stuff, folks. When all the reporters are gone, this is how you’ll get your news, and you’re going to have to figure out if this kind of manipulation is in your best interests.

My city hall reporter Rob Munro was quick to point out that $18 million is three times the assessed value.

Goodness, even BC Housing would blush at that. How nice of the city to walk into negotiations offering the best and highest use of the land.

It’s also very Kelowna, isn't it? Sure we have a dozen homeless people dying every year, can’t ‘afford’ to do anything more than bring in busses to warm homeless people without shelter in winter, but hey! Waterfront!

Sure, the land is very nice to have and completes some trails you could have just rode your bike around anyway. But the last time the City bought something like this it was the Rail Trail, which is now home to a mile-long homeless camp that no one is eager to use anymore. And there’s no talk at all about finding another place for them. So what was the point?

Tone deaf, I’d argue. Messed up priorities. But if I’m honest, Kelowna has something taxpayers in many nearby communities would love to have had — effective management.

These huge tax increases in Osoyoos and West Kelowna and Kamloops and others are the direct result of poor management and worse politicians pandering to citizens. Most of these expenses are the direct result of kicking the can down the road.

That’s why you’ve got to be careful when local politicians come in promising lower taxes. The bills always come due.

Which brings me back to old Tom Dyas. He’s the one who campaigned to stop the perennial four per cent budget increases that in all likelihood allowed the city to buy this parkland without a dent in the books.

What happened to that, Tom? It was raised to almost five per cent this year, is that what you meant? Which one did you sell out on first, that or the city's media spotlight? Hmm?

I have to ask the questions here because Tom prefers to communicate with an ‘embargoed’ column and only likes to answer questions when it’s convenient for him. Seems to me that was another one of his campaign promises, wasn’t it?

Basran’s chaotic reign is over, but the new boss is a lot like the old boss. We’ve simply traded a pink shirt for a black blazer with lapel pin.

It’s Grampa Tom’s Kelowna, now.

— Marshall Jones is the Managing Editor of iNFOnews.ca

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