Nobody has the corner on the ‘common good’

Enviro type Bronwen Scott unwittingly put her finger on a major disconnect in the parkade issue at last Thursday night’s forum.

The debate, she said, is about “the common good versus personal gain.”

Translation: “those who don’t want a parkade versus business owners who do.”

By slapping a simplistic label on the downtown business community as only in it for the money, Scott perpetuates one of the great myths driving the anti-parkade side.

One would think, from such a blatantly unfair comment, that businesses, including downtown shopkeepers, suck our city dry and give nothing back.

But let’s consider the hundreds of thousands of dollars these businesses contribute to local organizations and charities every year. It’s worth mentioning, too, that businesses pay a lot more tax than homeowners do. And that they create jobs and paycheques that pay for cars and houses and refrigerators and flat-screen TVs and weekends at the lake.

Let’s also understand that if the employees of those businesses lease stalls in the new parkade, Joe Public will reap the benefit of easier-to-find street parking in the shopping area.

So, please, can we divest ourselves of this notion that business owners take and never give? They give more than most. Business owners who support the parkade believe it will be good for business; in turn, that it will be good for Kamloops.

On the other hand, a lot of those same business people are missing, or maybe ignoring, what the opposition is all about. People like real estate manager Mona Murray, developer Jim Thompson, and realtor Vince Cavalier wasted their breaths Thursday night trying to convince people that more parking is needed in downtown Kamloops.

They are right — more parking is needed. As I wrote last week, we’ve designed a city around our dependence on the automobile and until we change our way of thinking we must accommodate the horseless carriage.

However, the key issue is not the need for a parkade, but location of the parkade. So statistics that prove a shortage of parking spaces don’t ace an argument based on a vision of what our city should look like.

And while those against something are often guilty of exaggeration, Thompson proved those who are for something can be equally as prone to over-statement. I heard him on the radio yesterday issuing a dire declaration that the downtown core is in danger of becoming a “ghetto” without the new parkade.

That kind of talk borders on irresponsible and does nothing to contribute to the conversation.

If there’s a resolution to this that considers both the practical needs of the downtown core and the desires of the community at large, it’s not going to be through recriminations.

Council, let’s face it, has screwed up. At a later date, I’ll demonstrate just how badly. But they aren’t involved in a massive conspiracy to achieve world domination or any of the wild intrigues supposed by some opponents of the parkade.

And those who would rather a parkade wasn’t built at that particular location aren’t all naysaying hicks blind to the imperatives of progress.

There are no bad guys; just people who disagree. They all seek “the common good.”