The Town of Osoyoos is ready to take more control of what is happening on Osoyoos Lake – and on March 15, the public will have an opportunity to give its opinion of a proposed water zone bylaw at a public hearing.
Osoyoos town council gave first reading to the bylaw on March 1.
“Water zoning will give the town the ability to be proactive in the management of moorage activities on Osoyoos Lake through enforcement, when required,” states a staff report by Steve Shannon, an assistant planner with the Town. [...more]
The provincial Transportation Ministry has proposed a possible compromise to address the concerns of fruit stand owners who say they’ll lose business due to a planned expansion of Hwy. 97 north of Osoyoos.
The Dhaliwal family, flanked by several neighbours and supporters including Lakhvinder Jhaj, who ran for the provincial NDP in this riding during the last election, arrived at Boundary-Similkameen MLA John Slater’s Osoyoos office on the morning of March 6 and were presented with a new preliminary design for the planned expansion of Hwy. 97 to four lanes between Dead Man’s Lake and Graveyard Hill. [...more]
By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times
Part of the 2010 provincial budget announced March 2 includes a proposed tax deferral for homeowners with children under the age of 18 that will come into effect in the next few months.
Although the proposed deferral program would give families the option of deferring all or part of their annual property taxes, a local accountant said people who opt to take part in the program could be digging themselves a large financial hole. [...more]
The Olympic Torch Relay may have already come and gone, but there was definitely a sense of “passing the torch” at Destination Osoyoos’s annual general meeting on March 5 at the Watermark Beach Resort.
“There’s nothing more constant than change,” said Derek Noske, now wearing the title of past chair of the Destination Osoyoos (DO) board. [...more]
Regional District Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) board and staff members spent six-and-a-half hours at a special meeting on Feb. 25 trimming the regional district’s proposed budget.
The RDOS budget that received first reading from the board on Feb. 18 included an overall tax requisition of $13,460,590. [...more]
The Town of Osoyoos has agreed to forward an application to the Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) with council’s blessing to have the Wish property removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
But the decision was not unanimous. [...more]
The tender for Phase 1 of the Northwest Sector Sewer Project has been assigned and that means shovels will likely be in the ground within the next two weeks.
At their March 1 meeting, Osoyoos town councillors agreed to give the tender for the first part of the project, which encompasses an area from Osoyoos’s northern boundary to the end of 89th Street, to a Penticton company called Sunland Utilities. [...more]
At its Feb. 24 meeting, the trustees of School District 53 passed a motion to allow full-day kindergarten classes for all the elementary schools within the district for the next school year except Osoyoos Elementary School.
The province has allotted funding for a total of 111 full-day kindergarten spots within the district. [...more]
“Is there one particular thing that drove this to happen? No. It’s an accumulation of things that happened over the last five years,” said Anarchist Mountain resident Joe Simoes about his move to have the Anarchist Mountain area removed from the governance of the Regional District Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS).
“They have never, ever played fair with us.”
Last week, Simoes submitted a petition to Bill Bennett, the provincial Minister of Community and Rural Development. [...more]
Jack Heppell was driving from Oliver toward Osoyoos when he saw the smoke billowing out of Harold Schwarz’s house on Feb. 22.
“I knew it wasn’t orchard burning, I could tell by the smoke,” Heppell said, adding he called 911 right away.
The fire broke out at approximately 11:45 a.m. at the home in a vineyard alongside Hwy. 97 near the top of Graveyard Hill. [...more]
