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Former mayor responds

Wayne Lippert reacts to a column written by Richard Rolke

After a few people asked me about Richard Rolke’s column about Vernon fire dispatch, I felt I needed to add some clarity to how and why Vernon city council of the day made the decision concerning it did.

Previous to the 2011 decision, Vernon fire dispatch was a Regional District of North Okanagan function. All jurisdictions in the regional district were partners in the dispatch service and all paid into the service. The population of Vernon had grown to a point that we were required by national standards to upgrade/improve the fire rescue service which included dispatch.

Vernon’s regional district partners of the day were unwilling to support or pay for the necessary upgrades as Vernon was the only partner required to have the upgrade.

Vernon city council did look at contracting the service out as well as having the necessary improvements completed.

Council voted to have the dispatch upgraded as it would provide the required upgrades to the service, it was cost effective at the time, the new system would allow contracting out the fire dispatch service to other local governments in B.C. not just our regional district partners.

The city was not allowed to put in a quote to the regional district because district staff and some elected officials felt it was a conflict of interest as the regional district partners had not passed a resolution that let Vernon out of the service so the city was still legally a partner in that service.

The city did give its regional partners written notice that each partners’ costs would be no higher with the expectation their costs would actually go down because of savings in delivery costs of the upgrades.

The city council of the day did not try to force its regional district partners into the service, they very much had their taxpayers interests in mind and in fact had plans to offer fire dispatch services to other B.C. communities to help reduce costs as they had with many other services.

There were many factors that effected the decisions of the day not only by Vernon council but also by the regional district elected officials and administration that are not taken into account by Mr. Rolke’s opinion.

I can assure you that city council and myself never considered fire dispatch or any of our decisions as being our legacy.

We always took the information we had and made decisions which the majority of council thought would benefit residents of the City of Vernon, and looking at partnerships and other ways to continue reducing costs to Vernon taxpayers.

Wayne Lippert,

Former mayor City of Vernon