Kelowna.com - Kelowna. Right Now!

By Chuck Poulsen

City council has violated its own policy in naming the new park across from City Hall as Jim Stuart Park.

Worse yet, it appears the 2007 vote to name the park was held to cover up an apparently secret vote to name the land Stuart Park in 1996 while Mayor Stuart himself still sat in office.

Regardless of the tackiness of the 1996 vote – which we will get to in a minute – the 2007 make-up vote one-ups it by violating a policy council agreed on in 2005 which would require “broad public support” for whatever name was chosen.

Recent Kelowna.com polls have shown the public overwhelmingly rejects the park being named after a politician, specifically Stuart. The polls were the first time the taxpayers have been asked, on a broad basis, about the naming of the park.

Understanding a bit of history is necessary.

Mayor Sharon Shepherd was a new councillor in ‘96. She said last night they voted that year to name two new parks in Kelowna: What is now Ben Lee Park in Rutland and the Jim Stuart Park across from City Hall, which will be completed later this year.

If there was such a council-ratified resolution in 1996, neither I nor the City Clerk’s office have been able to find any record of it being in public.

Shepherd said she could not recall if the vote was held in-camera (and it wouldn’t have been made public) or if it was held at an open council meeting. We will keep looking for a record of the vote being held in public.

Shepherd said Lee and Stuart excused themselves from the vote. I’ll bet they laughed all the way to the door, in public or not.

In 2003, a memo from staff to council states, in part, that there had been an earlier resolution “in recognition of his dedication and years of service representing the City of Kelowna, that Stuart Park be developed on the site as a tribute to the former mayor, James H. Stuart.” The 2003 memo referred to that bylaw as being “subsequent to 1996.” No doubt that by 2003, everyone on staff was calling it Stuart Park.

Also in 2003, Parks manager Joe Creron, writing to then city administrator Ron Born, suggested Born have the city sponsor a landscape design competition, which he refers to as the “Stuart Park site.” Creron makes no mention of a competition to name the park, it obviously being a fait accompli at that point. A few years later, it would become the responsibility of a Parks committee to bring forward a recommendation to council for the name of parks so the issue would finally be taken out of the backrooms.

In 2005, the Parks Naming Policy was passed by council in public.

In the reason for the 2005 policy, it states that: “Two long-time members of council (former mayor Stuart and former coun. Ben Lee) were retiring and it was considered timely to develop a policy to outline criteria for the naming of parks.”

It would have been timely for them to develop a policy nine years earlier before council set out to do the deed in ‘96.

Part of the 2005 naming policy states that requests to name a park be submitted to the city clerk, who will forward the requests to the Parks’ committee. If the Parks’ committee thinks the submission meets with policy, they will recommend the naming of the park to council for approval. This, presumably, should take the politics out of it.

In 2007, a bylaw officially designated the land Jim Stuart Park, for the second time. That move was presumably legal and tidy, in accordance the city’s 2005 policy statement. One might call this retroactive accountability seeing how the park was already being referred to by staff for some 10 years previous as Stuart Park.

Here is the big hitch: It’s clear that the 2007 Stuart Park bylaw did not meet the 2005 policy statement.

This is the relevant part of the 2005 policy statement for people suggesting a name:

2.a – (There must be) “Evidence of broad support from the community to honour an individual by naming a future park after that individual.”

Kelowna.com ran two polls recently to gauge support for naming the park after Stuart.

In the first poll, 82 per cent of the respondents said they didn’t want the park named after a politician.

In a second poll, only 15 per cent of Kelowna.com readers wanted to call it Jim Stuart Park, compared with three other options: Memorial Park, Gerry Zimmermann Park and Volunteer Park. Do those numbers, even if not scientifically polled, sound like anything remotely close to “broad public support” for Stuart?

There are a few more questions I need answers to but my deadline approaches so they will wait until next week:

* Shepherd is a proponent of consultation with the community. In the face of this evidence, will she now propose a motion to revisit the Stuart issue and put the naming out to the public to determine “broad community support?” On Tuesday night, she said: “I will honour resolutions to name these two people who have served the community.”

* An offended citizen might be inspired to ask the Court to strike the Stuart name or ask for an injunction preventing the City from using the name for being “ultra vires,” i.e. named without jurisdiction because it violated a previous policy. I might be so inspired unless council finally decides to do the right thing and ask the public what it wants the park to be named.

* Who are the members of the old boys’ club who supported the Stuart naming? Former mayor Walter Gray, then-councillor, now-MP Ron Cannan and Coun. Andre Blanleil, for sure. Hopefully, more on that next Wednesday if they will talk to me. I’m sure they will. They all wanted to talk to me when they were running for office.

Chuck Poulsen is a retired journalist, but can’t seem to give up writing. You can contact him directly at needlepoint@shaw.ca. His column appears Wednesdays.

Tags: Chuck Poulsen, jim Stuart Park, Kelowna, Mayor Sharon Shepherd

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