RCMP warming up to Boonstock, but festival still without liquor license

PENTICTON — Okanagan’s newest music festival hopes to be a crowd pleaser — but first, it must win over local authorities.

This morning, Boonstock organizers met with community stakeholders, including police, fire and ambulance, to present their revised safety plan.

The plan deals with traffic, security, emergency services and other issues.

Dale Kronebusch, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen’s emergency services supervisor, said the latest report may still need some work.

“It’s not complete yet. There are still some holes. But it is considerably a better document than the first one.”

RCMP agree that the report may need some tweaking, but overall, it addresses most of their safety concerns.

“We are pleased with a much improved safety plan that they provided with us today,” said Sgt. Rick Dellebuur.

“We’re certainly going to be working with them on any outstanding concerns.”

Boonstock organizers said most of the planning is complete, but they are still missing a liquor license.

“So the buttoning up process would be to go to the RCMP to get a final sign off so we can go to the provincial government and get a license for the liquor on the sites,” said Dan Bouchard, Boonstock Vice Chair.

There’s only two more months to go before the music festival makes its Okanagan debut.

The regional district said the event is being organized in more of a rush than usual.

“These are normally planned out well in advance. But seeing as it is happening in such a short time, we are just dropping what’s on our desk and rolling up our sleeves to help them along,” said Kronebusch.

Bouchard said he isn’t worried.

“We are well within our operational timeline of pulling this thing off, and I have no concerns about it at all.”

Up to 8500 festival-goers will be coming to Penticton from August 1-3.