With costs soaring for its regional parks and dog control programs, the Central Okanagan Regional District is being advised to take a hard look at how it delivers both pricey services.

Consultant Peter Adams was hired earlier this year to review the delivery of some regional services and he made frank comments and posed tough questions to the regional board at its Monday night meeting.

Adams noted that the operational costs for regional parks had gone from $2.4 million in 2004 to a budgeted amount of $5.4 million this year.

“Which is a very, very rapid pace compared to other budgets,” Adams explained.

He noted that pine beetle control efforts and initiatives to improve forest health caused some of those increased costs.

The regional district has also added more parks to its inventory in that time including Mission Greenway extensions and the Gellatly Nut Farm.

However, Adams cautioned that regional park costs may continue their rapid rise because of plans to acquire more green space under the new $17-million Parks Legacy Program.

The board is pursuing these acquisitions without any apparent development plan in place, he stated.

“When you look at your five-year projection in your budget you see all the numbers in it with respect to park acquisition. You don’t see anything with respect to park development that’s transparent to me.

“So the question then is: Do you really want to be acquiring all these things if you’re not clear that you’re either not going to develop them very quickly or before you even have a park development plan that says what you want to do with them once you get them?”

However, rural Westside director Jim Edgson made a case for the legacy program, urging forward thinking.

“If we say, ‘Let’s not do it now,’ then we (might say) 20 years later, ‘Gee, I wish we’d done it.’”

On a final parks note, Adams said the board may want to consider reclassifying some regional parks. Based on size and location, some may be better operated as municipal parks, he added.

“Recognize that a large proportion of regional parks are within municipalities, something you don’t always see in other regional districts. In some other regional districts, municipalities don’t even participate in a regional parks function.”

Incidentally, West Kelowna has questioned whether Shannon Lake, Gellatly Nut Farm, Gellatly Heritage Park, Mount Boucherie and Raymer Bay should be regional or municipal parks.

As for dog control, Adams found that the cost of delivering the service has nearly doubled since 2004, going from $419,000 in 2004 to an estimated $817,000 this year.

Yet, in the same time, dog complaints and the number of animal impounded has dropped by about 25 per cent.

For example, last year there were 2,164 dog complaints and 886 animals were impounded. In 2004, the numbers were 2,990 and 1,186 respectively.

Board chairman Robert Hobson noted that the regional district runs a comprehensive dog control program and he accepted that it may be time to make some changes.

“It’s a big service and very expensive. It’s fertile ground for reducing our costs,” said Hobson.

Options include contracting out the service or increasing licensing fees for dogs, according to Adams.

The Central Okanagan Regional District has one of the lowest licensing fees for spayed and neutered dogs in the province at $16, mentioned Adams. By comparison, most of B.C.’s regional districts charge fees ranging from the $20 to $50.

The regional district board will hold a special workshop on Nov. 9 to discuss the findings in more detail and to begin addressing some of the questions raised.

jluciw@kelownacapnews.com