Rob Sawatzky

I was president of Ribbons of Green Trails Society for 4 years and advocated to all of the local councils for linear parks and non motorized trails. When I was mayor, I was the first politician to raise the concept of the KPR rail trail purchase at the quarterly meeting of the mayors of the 4 largest communities in the valley. That led to the process that resulted in the great asset we have now. That model showed the involved local communities how to cooperate with a single leading agency to obtain the abandoned rail from Sicamous to Armstrong for public trail use. We sold our acreage and moved to east hill specifically so that we could walk or ride our bikes for our daily transport. We both own EVs, but they don't get much use due to our daily cycling. We have a heat pump and buy carbon credits, and all the usual personal carbon reduction actions. (I took my first ecology class in the 1970s) . We will never go back to any ICEs. Our favourite place to visit is Holland because of the active transport, low carbon lifestyle. We bore all of our friends with our commitment.

a.The short answer is very seldom. The longer answer is: when all of the best information available to council at the time of making the decision indicates that the negatives of deviating from our community plan, are outweighed by the benefits of doing so.
I personally feel that the OCP, is an essential guiding document for how we achieve our goals and make decisions for our community.
To spend that time, money and effort in order to wisely plan where we will go as a community, and then ignore or deviate from it, is illogical….at best.

b.I think that the steady improvement in density that is occurring in our more central areas or core is definitely “good”. I see many more duplexes, four plexes, and renovations of older east hill houses, as examples of where we should be going in increasing density and community efficiency. A prime example of “not good” would have been the 580 Commonage Road proposal that 3 members of our current council supported. It was in clear contravention of our OCP, and the Life Cycle Cost analysis showed what a significant financial burden it would have been in perpetuity.

a.My understanding is that land use planning is the most important tool of local city government in dealing with GHG emissions. Our OCP goal of increasing density, and increasing active transport options and transit, are clear and effective present tools that I will support and promote. We can’t erase the sprawling past nature of our community, but we can work diligently to make it better.

b.I would like to see a renewed emphasis from our Federal government, with the cooperation of our provincial government, on tackling climate change. Mr Carney has a history of commitment to climate action but international events have essentially erased any useful national legislation, like effective levels of carbon taxation, that would encourage substantive changes that we could support and promote at our local level.
We would benefit mightily from economically driven reductions in the use of fossil fuels in our transportation, industry and homes. Design and climate mitigation and adaptation could be promoted effectively with supportive senior policy and financial signals and assistance to improve the efficacy of our CAP, instead of working in opposition to our goals.

I feel that parks, green-space, and recreation and natural lands are an essential component of how we make our community attractive and liveable. And that should be a primary goal of our council, and one of the ways in which we invest to make our community better.
Vernon has a Master Parks Plan that must be reviewed and updated regularly. Environmental and natural lands should be a part of that parks land inventory and planning. Wise input and planning in the development of our OCP, Official Transportation Plan, and our Parks Plan will give us the answers in almost all situations, so that council is not reduced to ad hoc decisions.
Good councils make good policy. They don’t do work. Administrations do work.
Good councils should plan in ways that lay out the roadmap for how to deal with these questions and situations. Poor councils persist in constant ad hoc decisions.
I will work to help our council be a really good council.

We can best protect our water dependent Environment by securing our water supply. Our toolkit will include more reclaimed water usage, and volumetric pricing to encourage all users, to make choices that reduce our consumption to more normal world levels as we are very high per capita users. We should also investigate whether managing our most critical resource with an independent public utility, would assist in better management. I told the head of the Okanagan Basin Water Board 15 years ago that I thought that water could become the most important single issue in the valley. There wasn’t a political will to make the necessary changes over those years. I believe that there is now a strong will and I will work with council to make those changes that will make our water supply more secure.

I was president of Ribbons of Green Trails Society for 4 years and advocated to all of the local councils for linear parks and non motorized trails. When I was mayor, I was the first politician to raise the concept of the KPR rail trail purchase at the quarterly meeting of the mayors of the 4 largest communities in the valley. That led to the process that resulted in the great asset we have now. That model showed the involved local communities how to cooperate with a single leading agency to obtain the abandoned rail from Sicamous to Armstrong for public trail use. Our council promoted a community Climate Action Plan. Personally, we sold our acreage and moved to east hill specifically so that we could walk or ride our bikes for our daily transport. We both own EVs, but they don't get much use due to our daily cycling. We have a heat pump and buy carbon credits, and all the usual personal carbon reduction actions. (I took my first ecology class in the 1970s) . We will never go back to any ICEs. Our favourite place to visit is Holland because of the active transport, low carbon lifestyle, . We bore all of our friends with our commitment.

Climate change has increased the unpredictability of our snow and rainfall, exactly as the models predicted. We were already the hottest, most arid, water stressed area of Canada before the effects of climate change. Droughts now come more frequently, and combined with heat, have increased forest fires and flooding. Our most immediate need is to secure our water supply. Among other things, our toolkit should include pressing the provincial government to rationalize legislation for fuller use of our reclaimed water, pricing measures to provide strong incentives to more wisely reduce the usage of water by our residential, industrial and especially ag., our biggest users, down to more normal world levels from our very high per capita use. We should also investigate whether an independent public utility would result in better management of our most valuable resource. Coincident with securing our water supply, we must continue to reduce the worst risks from floods and fire, which are becoming much more regular and frequent. Our community fire smarting efforts must continue, and must include our watershed. We must also adapt our built environment and infrastructure to mitigate the results of more frequent extreme rain events with the design of its various components like storm sewers, road networks, building design , mitigation of heat islands, and provide community cooling, and tree canopies, etc.