FILE PHOTO - Mayor Tom Dyas, centre, and the rest of Kelowna city council pose for a photo. Back row from left to right: Luke Stack, Mohini Singh, Tom Dyas, Maxine DeHart and Charlie Hodge. Front row from left to right: Ron Cannan, Loyal Wooldridge, Gord Lovegrove and Rick Webber.

Image Credit: City of Kelowna

Every newly-elected city council starts off taking a few months to hammer out their priorities for their coming four-year term. In Kelowna, with four new members elected to the nine-member council in 2022, changes in focus were inevitable.

For the eight years before that, the only change on council was Loyal Wooldridge replacing Tracy Gray in 2018 after she went on to become the Member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake County riding.

On Monday, March 20, the new council is expected to adopt its priorities for the 2023-26 term, which include six priority areas.

Five of those headings are very similar to the 2019-22 council’s priorities: crime, homelessness, housing affordability, climate and transportation. The only difference is agriculture makes this list this year, replacing economic policy.

Agriculture comes with a goal to “facilitate the creation of a permanent home for the farmer’s market” and expand bylaw enforcement.

While the other priorities fall into the same general categories, the focus in each is somewhat different.

Here’s a look at some of those differences:

CRIME

Top of mind this term is to fight property crime like break and enters, give support to business groups to deal with safety issues, create a safety task force and push the province to deal better with mental health and substance use issues.

That’s more detailed but not much different than the old council that wanted to implement a community safety and well being strategy, and expand the Police and Crises Team (which has finally happened).

HOMELESSNESS

Pushing for more supportive and complex care housing is a key priority of the current council, along with “alternative forms of sheltering” and developing an emergency shelter program.

The last council identified a “social and inclusive” priority which was aimed at reducing homelessness through more supportive housing (some of which it got) and support of the Journey Home Strategy (which the new council continues to do).

The number of homeless people on city streets has grown dramatically just in the last year, in large part, due to significant increases in the cost of housing along with inflation.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Earlier this week, council spent a couple of hours talking about affordable housing and concluding that more studies need to be done before action is taken.

READ MORE: Kelowna wants to create more affordable housing but will wait for more studies

Council’s housing priorities include buying land for affordable housing, increasing the number of below-market rentals and to “partner on the creation of a low-cost affordable housing pilot project.”

Based on its actions earlier this week, that's a goal that will wait until somewhat later in the term.

The last council dealt with housing under a “vibrant neighbourhoods” heading that talked about things like “highest quality architecture and site design” and “animated parks and public spaces” under the goal of “affordable housing and higher density neighbourhoods.”

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

This council wants to apply a “climate lens” to decision making, increase the urban tree canopy and pilot an “energy concierge” program to enable retrofits to buildings.

The old council, under “environmental protection” had a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (which hasn’t happened) and “ensure business continuity during extreme weather events,” of which there were many.

TRANSPORTATION

The current council highlights the need to improve alternative modes of transportation between downtown, UBC Okanagan and the airport, to improve transit and improve traffic flow on major arterials like Lakeshore Road.

READ MORE: No second bridge over Okanagan Lake in Kelowna for at least 20 years: MOT

The old council wanted to complete a transportation master plan, put bike lanes along Ethel Street and Sutherland Avenue and draft a downtown parking management plan, which have all been done.

A pedestrian overpass across Highway 97 downtown, which was on the last council’s list, is still in the works.

See the 2019-22 priorities here.

See the 2023-26 priorities here under agenda number 4.1.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. 

News from © iNFOnews, 2023