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By Marshall Jones
If you recall the long, tortured history of the popular Mission Creek Greenway, you’ll remember when it ceased being a linear park. That’s because some Hall Road property owners put up barricades in 2004 as part of a longstanding dispute with the City of Kelowna claiming trespass.
One of the owners was former MLA Cliff Serwa, but lets not hold that against him.
I am sympathetic to private property owners who have their land stripped away by government, but the action they took was a terrible nuisance to taxpayers and greenway users and their tactics against the city bordered on the comical.
Would you believe the whole thing still isn’t over yet?
No, the barricades aren’t going up again. In 2004, then-Mayor Walter Gray held a press conference announcing negotiations were fruitless and the city would expropriate the land. Serwa refused to negotiate until the city paid his bills to his “agent,” Brian Kane, who submitted bills for “services rendered” for over $400,000, then $800,000 and finally $1.01 million. Gray thought it was ridiculous.
“To give you an example… I can tell you (Kane’s) mileage claim alone includes 90,000 kilometres of travel in one year,” Gray told reporters. “That’s the equivalent of driving around the world at the equator twice.”
Serwa only wanted $400,000. To be fair, Serwa said he offered a portion of his farm to the city in 1997 for far less, provided the City acknowledged that it was private land. Obviously that wouldn’t do for a public park—what happens when it’s sold?
Serwa and Friedrich were preceded in their eventual lawsuit with the City and the Province of B.C. by other property owners who got a judgment in their favour by the Supreme Court of B.C. By all accounts, the province should have appealed that decision, but scared of what the eventual outcome could mean to other assets, it abandoned the case, leaving Kelowna holding the bag.
Armed with precedence, Serwa and Friedrichs went to court making the same claims of trespass and that led to Gray’s decisive action to expropriate (I miss Walter. He was always great for the news business).
Why bring this all up again? Because a funny thing about the litigious is, well, they are litigious. After he was done with Kelowna taxpayers, Serwa sued his own lawyer, Doug Welder, for a review of his legal fees. That case was just decided and it spills all the details of what happened behind the scenes and how much Serwa actually took home from the adventure.
Apparently Walter Gray wasn’t the only one who was unimpressed with Kane because Kane “was left out of the settlement discussions.” A later note in the decision suggests it was because of “the unsatisfactory performance of Brian Kane at the examination for discovery.”
The city paid out $250,000 plus costs—$200,000 for Serwa and $50,000 for Friedrichs plus costs to settle the trespass. It appears—though, admittedly not very clearly—that the Serwa’s got another $74,000 for the expropriation and the Friedrichs another $40,000. (It cost another $300,000 for the city to settle the preceding case.)
But most of that cash was spent on Kane and Welder’s fees. Brian Kane was given $126,316.78 for his services. Welder’s fees totalled just short of $75,000. Welder even billed $750 to speak to reporters Judie Steeves and J.P. Squire about the suit. I’m pretty sure the reporters billed their bosses much, much less for the pleasure.
In another laughter-through-tears revelation, they called City solicitor Barry Williamson in the review, though the judge noted that his presence had nothing at all to do with the matter at hand.
Guess who paid Williamson for the unexpected day in court?
Finally, there is some question as to whether the matter has even ended. The trespass issue is now settled and they have accepted some expropriation money from the city, but they also officially opposed it. They are still within their rights to challenge the expropriation. It’s entirely possible the matter isn’t done yet.
Marshall@kelowna.com
One Response to “Marshall Jones: What it cost to take City to court over Greenway”
Tags: doug welder
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With all due respect the city initiated this fiasco by simply claiming that private property owners did not own the land and were not entitled to any funds for their use.
Please get your facts straight including the McLeays part of the story which you never outlined.
Please continue discussion on the forum: link