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THE WINFIELD-BASED Pursuit Of Excellence program midget squad reached the finals of the 2013 Elite Midget Tournament in Kelowna.
COLUMNIST Laurie Mills says overwhelmed and exhausted business managers can reduce their excessive workloads by getting the “monkeys” off their back.
DON BURNETT gets a chance to pay his final farewells to the house, now targeted for demolition, that he grew up in and his father built from scratch 45 years ago.
ALISTAIR WATERS says Kelowna’s downtown is getting some long overdue fiscal attention from city council.
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serving our community 1930 to 2013
TUESDAY January 15, 2013 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
Residents facing fees to park outside homes
▼ COURT
Alistair Waters
CONTRIBUTOR
Trial backlog is forcing charges to be dropped Cheryl Wierda
ASSISTANT EDITOR
The city’s plan to start charging residents who park on the street outside their homes if they live on roads with time-restricted parking will start Feb. 1. City council approved the timing Monday, after giving the plan the nod last summer. Under the plan, residents will have to pay $30 per year for a set of parking permits if they live on streets where there are time restrictions posted for parking. Lost permits will cost $5 to replace. The areas covered by the plan include the North End (around Prospera Place), east of downtown up to Gordon Drive, the neighbourhood surrounding Kelowna General Hospital, as well as the areas around Kelowna Secondary School and Okanagan College on KLO and the Landmark office tower complex across Highway 97 from the Parkinson Recreation Centre. The permits will allow residents to park and be exempt from the time restrictions, which the city
SNOWFLAKE INSPECTION…
WADE PATERSON/CAPITAL NEWS
Julia Courtney uses a magnifying glass to identify the snow on her mitten at the inaugural Explore the Snow event held last weekend at Mission Creek Regional Park.
A Kelowna judge has thrown out drug charges against a Lake Country man, citing court backlogs as the reason. It is the second documented time in a year that the judge has stayed charges because the court system couldn’t accommodate a trial in a timely fashion. In the most recent decision, published online late last week, Judge Robin Smith stayed charges related to a 341-plant marijuana grow operation after noting the accused had his June 2012 trial date cancelled because the courtroom his case was to be heard in was overbooked. “Both sides were ready, willing and able to get a much earlier first trial date, but there were insufficient judicial resources to have the matter heard on the first trial date,” wrote Smith. Smith said it is common practice to triple book courtrooms, anticipating some of the cases will “collapse” prior to trial, as a way to deal with “limited judicial resources.” In this case, the accused’s trial was cancelled because another “more urgent” case was also slated to occur that day, said Smith. A second trial was booked for this month, nearly two years after lawyers indicated they were ready to go to trial. However, Smith instead stayed the charges after defence successfully argued the accused’s Charter right to a trial within a reasonable time had been violated. “This 21.5 month delay from arraignment is singularly caused by insufficient judicial resources,” wrote Smith. A Supreme Court of Canada decision, considered to be one of the authorities on what is considered a “reasonable” length of time to get to trial, suggests an “institutional delay” of eight to 10 months be the guideline for judges considering what’s an acceptable delay. “My overall impression is that over time, the courts have allowed longer and longer institutional delays,” wrote Smith. “This is primarily because judges, just like mem-
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