The Town of Oliver have not taken the necessary steps to obtain tenure for park purposes over the Area from Drop Structure 11 to Drop Structure 13 as requested in our proposal for a riverfront park along the Okanagan River Channel.

The report of Council’s application for tenure as reported in the media applies for tenure for “trail purposes only” over the section on the East side of the river from the bridge on Fairview Road south to Drop Structure 11.

For the Park Proposal to proceed, it was mandatory that Town Council apply for tenure for purposes of construction and maintenance of a Riverfront Park on both sides of the River from Drop Structures 11 to 13, without which the proposal cannot proceed.

The purpose of this letter is to let the community know that we are reluctantly giving up on our efforts to create a park along the Okanagan River Channel in Oliver. When we embarked on developing this concept we had anticipated that Oliver Council would wholeheartedly embrace the concept and give the project at least their moral and limited technical support. It is difficult for us to understand why this support was not forthcoming for such a significant community enhancement project. The Park was to have been provided at no cost to the Town, other than some minimal annual maintenance costs.

We anticipated other agencies would be the main stumbling block and were prepared to do whatever was necessary to get the required approvals. Without Council’s endorsement and a subsequent application by the Town to acquire tenure over the area, the proposed project obviously cannot proceed. It is unfortunate that the current proposal for paving the east side of the river dyke could not have been done in conjunction within a total Park concept. Our costing would indicate that with some creativity the southern portion could have been included at little or no increase in the total cost.

Pending support by a future Oliver Council, we feel that the project can and should be developed, but we will leave it to others to bring it to fruition.

A goodly amount of information was collected pending the Town’s approval. All the necessary bases had been covered to initiate the project, including the Okanagan Similkameen Parks Society, elected officials and others deemed to have an interest in the area.

So that if others or other groups who wish to continue pursuing the project in the future don’t have to re-invent the wheel, we will be happy to share the information and large scale maps that we have collected and we wish them well.

Bill Ross and Murray Soder