The Kamloops Daily News reports, “For the more than 150 people who packed tightly into a small room at Desert Gardens Thursday (September 15) evening, the winner and loser of the Great Park(ade) Debate between councillors Tina Lange (for) and Denis Walsh (against) came down to a single phrase. ‘We should not be putting a parking garage in our park,’ said Walsh. Walsh, along with the majority in the room who felt the same way, repeated versions of this phrase to applause again and again.”
The debate – over a two-level, 350 stall parkade in the Lorne Street parking lot adjacent to Riverside Park – was co-sponsored by the Council of Canadians, the Kamloops Voters’ Society and the Kamloops Central Business Improvement Area.
“The counter-petition against borrowing $8 million to fund the parkade on Lorne Street that is now in the hands of opponents has passed the half-way point in signatures needed to force a referendum.” An earlier Daily News article noted, “Opponents of the Lorne Street parkade have collected more than 4,000 of the necessary 6,539 signatures needed to force the issue to a citywide referendum or to nix the plan.” The deadline for signing onto the petition is October 11.
City-led information sessions found a 68 per cent negative public response to the proposed parkade.
A previous campaign blog on this can be read at http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10448.
