This is where cold hard facts give way to the hottest of takes, mostly mine I suppose. I’m the editor, Marshall Jones.

Want to include yours? Listen, this isn’t the comment section, this isn’t social media. Discussion and debate requires context and a wee bit of bravery — we need your name and where you’re writing from. Include it in your account or email me anytime.

We’ve been pondering how to cover this municipal election.

Typically, it’s three months of feigning objectivity while introducing readers to dozens of candidates of wildly varying quality with a straight face and no comment.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s important stuff, I am grateful to those news agencies that do it. I just think we can focus on something else instead of repeating it.

Municipal and federal elections are easier because we can choose some predictability and stability in a party if not the representative, though that’s also flawed for the same reason (as the Okanagan continues to remind us).

Municipal seats are different. Without parties, it becomes about name recognition, which can’t be the best way.

It can get a little frustrating too, watching candidates talk about populist issues that local government has no role in. School boards too. Especially school boards. It should be disqualifying, not in any official sense, but for educated voters in general.

So how do you choose and how can we help? Would a sort of score card of attributes to look for be helpful? Red flags? Would you follow the recommendations of community veterans in this arena if they studied the candidates for qualifications?

I’m open to ideas. Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

We’re famous for messing around with water here in the BC Interior, now we’re in the find out stage.

These are not particularly fertile valleys we live in. It has taken a lot of water for all these landscaped cedars and hydrangeas and grass lawns, etc. In the Okanagan, we use twice as much water as the average Canadian.

But look! We have rivers of water in Kamloops and lakes full of the stuff in the Okanagan! If only it were so simple and inexpensive to pump it up mountains in meaningful quantities.

I’m in; most of my lawn is brown. A bunch of my neighbours seem to have missed the memo, however. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that some folks just won’t cooperate in the face of collective danger. I have a feeling the finger pointing is about to start and it will be interesting how local governments react on a street level.

But we also must react in much higher levels. They’re talking about moving water from a lake to their reservoir in Vernon or perhaps tapping more underground water, none of which sounds cheap or quick.

I think that’s how we have to think about this problem because while we adapt to using less water, we still have a fire season.

This morning, I watched some guy park his old truck on his front lawn of dried grass. On the weekend, I had a minor grease-fire on my barbecue I was briefly worried might start a fire in my own backyard, which borders a tinder-dry canyon.

These aren’t theoretical concerns. Last week, a man died when his tractor lit the grass around him and he couldn’t escape.

One burgeoning emergency exacerbates the risk of disaster.

How are you coping with water restrictions where you live? Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

Halfway through summer, we’ve almost made it.

That’s how I think about this season now, it’s more waiting for danger and evacuation than fun in the sun. It’s something to get through.

I’ve been evacuated three times now, once more voluntarily. Now, I don’t like leaving my home for extended periods, keep my vehicles full of fuel, bags packed, ready to go.

It’s August tomorrow and we’ve been very fortunate in the Thompson-Okanagan but we’re not out of the woods just yet.

Let’s stay vigilant out there. Have a great long weekend, everybody. Email me if you want.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

iN RESPONSE

THOMPSON: After 10 years writing columns, time has come to turn another page

Very sorry to see you go Sir. Travel well.

— William Mastop via iNFOnews.ca

iN RESPONSE to Monday’s newsletter opinion-editorial on municipal water restrictions

The way I’m coping with the water restrictions was to have landscape boxes installed and putting artificial plants in them with decorative garden ornaments. I’ve received compliments on them and people don’t even realize the plants aren’t real. So, I got the look without using water. Win/win.

— L. Sutton, West Kelowna via email

We as Canadians seem to have money to send around the world, however, when it comes to our own backyard, we can’t spend money to reroute water from one lake to the river system, or dig wells in places that would be beneficial. If we don’t find alternate resources soon, we are going to lose our fruit and vegetable production.

Also, why do we continue to approve building permits for hundreds and hundreds of units throughout the valley when we don’t have the water to supply what we need now.Where is all of the money going from all of the building permits?

— Donna Hoover via email

Former BC teacher suing because his child porn charges interrupted sale of his Kelowna business

Of course these charges, coupled with a prior conviction for the same subject matter completely destroyed the value of the company. How the heck are you going to sell that?? This sort of offense is wholly repugnant to John and Jane doe public and there is no way they are going to have your product in their business. I don’t know how Mr. Davey can even express surprise.

— William Mastop via iNFOnews.ca

Sign removals won’t deter Kamloops man’s river safety mission

Mr. Griffiths is doing an excellent public service with his signs. Bylaw is demonstrating some real tunnel vision here. Those signs are the kind of thing that really bring home to people the actual gravity of the danger.

— William Mastop via iNFOnews.ca

Tripping an 86-year-old Penticton man, breaking his leg over a parking spot at Walmart, was just this man’s latest angry incident

Even letting alone that Michael Otway had no authority to even start with his parking lot enforcement this sentence is an affront to any shred of pubic decency. He broke the leg of a man 30 years his senior after the man had gone out and moved his car as demanded. A broken leg (or worse) caused by tripping someone in their 80s is absolutely foreseeable. Frankly it is lucky the victim was not more seriously injured. This is shockingly cruel and bullying behaviour. The idea that a community sentence somehow adequately deals with this is beyond the pale. Michael Otway went to court for sentencing and was able to stop at the local sandwich stop for lunch on the way home. Disgusting.

— William Mastop via iNFOnews.ca

iN RESPONSE to the newsletter opinion-editorial on Amber Alerts published Wednesday, July 22

I am in absolute agreement with you! I keep my alert signal ON, in case I need to be notified of things of an immediately dangerous nature TO ME. Things like anything dangerous approaching my home, e.g. forest fire or mudslide, wild animals attacking homes, etc.

But NOT for an amber alert for a missing child! NOT at midnight! There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for this type of stupidity – AT MIDNIGHT!!

Amber alerts are important. And are needed to help a child in danger. But please, use your brain, and send this type of alert out IN THE MORNING. I think it would be much more helpful and produce much better results.

— Cheryl Aiken via email

I was just having the same discussion about Amber Alerts in BC with a former media colleague. We were both working in a Vancouver newsroom when the system launched and if I recall at the time, they were not originally intended for parental abductions unless there was a real, present danger the child would be harmed.

Of course harm to a child can happen in a parental abduction, but that is not the norm.

The Amber Alert was created for a Micheal Dunahee type situation where the child was seen with a strange man who left in a strange van, but with only a few exceptions, that is not what we have seen it used for thus far in B.C. It suggests to me potential mission creep that as you suggest, could reduce program effectiveness and utility in an emergency.

While there are guidelines and criteria for law enforcement in issuing an alert, the decision is always going to be a judgement call on some level. I also worry about police potentially being trigger shy about issuing an alert.

One thing is clear though – with the kind of information sharing and transparency we have come to expect in Canada, short of a formal program evaluation by a provincial task force or something, I’m not holding my breath for answers, let alone accountability.

— Brett Mineer, Kamloops via email

Read your article and I agree. I live with chronic pain and I sleep at odd hours and I have been woken up 5 times in the last month or so by amber alerts. Two were in the middle of the night! They are meant to be for children in imminent danger but they are being abused here. It seems like they are being used for custody disputes instead as none of the kids were in danger. The parents they were with had no charges against them? It is very frustrating for the chronically ill who are at home and not driving around to be woken up.

Also my partner is in health care and it’s horrible when they go off in a care home or hospital. Every staff member has a phone and so does every resident/patient. Yes, old people in homes have cell phones now. It is the best way for each one to stay in touch with family, especially with facetime. so you have several hundred phones all making that awful sound and really really bothers some of the people in the home. It takes forever for the staff to calm everyone down.

We really do deserve to have the right to shut Amber alerts off. The USA does. After all, if we are in our own bedrooms or care homes or hospitals we cannot help anyhow.
Our own phones have to be turned off when we sleep now. It is the only way to not get woken up. Maybe that is no big deal for a healthy person but when you are chronically ill, sleep is everything and unless the kid is in my bedroom I cannot help. My partner works nights sometimes and needs sleep during the day.

I pay my phone bill so I should have the right to turn off those alerts. The last 3 children did not even meet the criteria for an Amber alert. It’s ridiculous. People need to learn about the real Amber it was named for.

I agree it is crying wolf. We are forced to turn our phones off now. Also the alert sound is really awful for anyone with a heart issue or PTSD. We should have the right to make it whatever type of notification sound WE can deal with.

I personally am getting to the point where a landline is looking better to have everyday and ditching the cell phone entirely.

Of course if you say any of this anywhere people think you don’t care about children’s lives. Sigh.

— Carol Greene via email

Disclaimer: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the editor, iNFOnews.ca, iNFOTEL MULTIMEDIA, its partners, principals or advertisers.