This is my West Kelowna council platform. Twenty-one promises, each one specific enough that you can check whether I kept it. I am running for West Kelowna city council in the general local election on Saturday, October 17, 2026, and I have already written about why I am running. This is the what.
A West Kelowna council platform should not be a mood. "Fiscal responsibility" and "smart growth" cannot be measured, which is exactly why candidates like them. Every promise below names a problem, says what I would measure, and says what I would do first. If I get elected and you cannot find the number two years from now, you will know I failed.
One councillor is one vote of seven. I cannot deliver any of this alone. What I can do is bring the motion, ask for the number, and vote the way I said I would.
On this page
Money and accountability
West Kelowna adopted a 6.638% tax increase for 2026. That number came down from 8.6% in the draft and 7.6% after December deliberations, which is good work. But look at how the last point was found. Castanet's reporting on the March vote describes cutting a requested parks position and a requested bylaw officer, and councillors themselves called it pushing the decision to the next council.
I run operations for a living. When a cost gets deferred at work, it does not disappear. It shows up later with interest. The first section of my West Kelowna council platform is about making that visible.
Here is why it matters. I took the tax increase the city has published every year since 2008 and compounded them. From 2008 to 2023, municipal taxes went up about 65% while prices in BC went up about 37%. Add the last three years and the city's total is past 100%. Some of that bought real services, and I want to know which parts. That is what the next seven promises are for.
1. Two numbers on every budget item
What it costs now, and what it costs if we wait. Every capital and operating request comes to council with both before anyone votes.
2. A public deferral ledger
Anything cut or delayed to hit a tax rate gets a line item: today's cost, projected cost, and the year it comes back. Published with the financial plan so residents can see what this year's rate borrowed from next year.
3. Scope, owner, timeline, and cost cap on every project, reported quarterly
When any one of those four changes, council and residents hear about it in the same report. Nobody should learn a project is over budget from the newspaper.
4. Full lifecycle costing on capital
Twenty-year operating and replacement costs sit beside the build cost before approval. A building is not a one-time purchase.
5. No quiet withdrawals from the future
The ledger in promise 2 records what got pushed back. This one is about who owns it. If council wants to lower this year's tax rate by cutting what we save for future infrastructure, councillors name the project that gets delayed, on the record, at the meeting where they vote.
6. A staff-led efficiency sprint once a year
City staff are residents. They already know which form goes to the wrong desk and which approval sits in a queue for no reason. Once a year, they name the friction, fix it, and the results get published. I have watched this work: at CanScribe, replacing the CRM, LMS, and phone platform cut time to technical resolution by 50%, and training the admissions team took the connection rate from 10.2% to 41.4% with the same people and the same budget. Efficiency means smarter operations, not cuts or layoffs.
7. A live permitting dashboard
Permits in the queue by type, average review time, and the average extra time added when an application arrives incomplete. Updated monthly, with a published checklist so applications arrive complete the first time. Builders and residents see the same numbers staff see.
The full version of these seven promises, with the numbers behind each one, is in 7 West Kelowna budget promises on money and accountability.
Housing
I have written about wanting the 1990s math back. A normal job in a normal town used to buy a normal home. Not a big one. A home. The housing section of my West Kelowna council platform starts with the family that cannot buy. It also covers homelessness, which sits here because it touches housing, but I do not see it as a housing problem first. It is a regional problem that every Okanagan city has to work on together, and no single city can build its way out of it.
8. Bring back the modest family home
Small-lot detached, townhomes, and rowhouses up to about 2,100 square feet allowed as of right in more neighbourhoods, with a faster permit path and lower fees for homes under that size. Nobody needs council's help building a 4,000 square foot house. The three-bedroom family home is the one that has disappeared, and it disappeared partly because we regulated it out. I want to know whether the city's fee schedule treats a 2,100 square foot home and a 4,000 square foot one the same. If it does, that is a policy choice against the family home, and I would change it.
9. One Okanagan plan to the province, not a West Kelowna plan alone
The city's own Westside Unique Identifier Count found 85 people experiencing homelessness in 2024, up from 62 in 2022. Most of the people counted are from the Okanagan, many from Kelowna. That is the part that matters. Homelessness moves. If West Kelowna builds the best supports in the valley, more people come here for them. That helps Vernon, Kelowna, and Penticton, and it leaves West Kelowna taxpayers carrying the bill. No city of 40,000 should take this on alone. I would bring a motion asking council to invite every Okanagan municipality, Vernon to Penticton at minimum, to co-sign one written ask to the province: shared data, a shared plan, published targets, and provincial accountability for the pieces only the province controls, including police and the courts. Until that regional plan exists, I would not support West Kelowna expanding permanent services on its own.
10. Stop repeating what does not show results
Every program the city funds or partners on gets a target and a public report. If it does not move the number in two years, the money moves.
11. A quarterly public count
How many people, where, and what services they touched. The community safety plan council adopted in September gets measured, or it is just a document.
12. A regional reset
The city's own report recommended a one-stop service hub. A year earlier, council rejected a hygiene centre over its location, after partner organizations pulled out. I would ask Kelowna, the RDCO, Interior Health, and BC Housing for a shared review of what the Okanagan has spent on this and what it got. The hub question belongs inside the regional plan from promise 9, not ahead of it. When it comes back, it comes back with regional partners at the table and a site process residents can see from the start.
The full housing section, including the 1990s math, is in my West Kelowna housing promises.
Downtown Westbank
Downtown is the part of my West Kelowna council platform people ask about most at the door. Removing the Highway 97 couplet, the highway split through Westbank, has been a West Kelowna priority since incorporation. It is 2026 and the province has completed preliminary design, with Dobbin Road becoming four lanes of highway and Main Street returning to a two-lane community street. Preliminary. After eighteen years.
13. Get the Main Street streetscape design to shelf-ready
The $250,000 Main Street streetscape design was deferred out of the 2026 budget. I would push to get it back in, finish it fast, and finish it well, so the province has no excuse left. The city's own statement says advancing the design shows the Ministry that the city is committed. Fine. Let's be committed on paper they can build from.
14. A private-partner cultural and business hub on Main Street
The Westbank Museum and a theatre as anchor tenants. The city brings land and zoning. A private developer brings the capital and takes the risk. Government is not good at running buildings, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
15. Give West Kelowna a theatre
We are the only urban centre in the Okanagan without one. Our high school students get bused to Kelowna or Summerland to use a stage, and a second high school is coming, so that demand only grows. The museum board wants to move and has proposed the theatre as part of the same building. A theatre that local businesses can rent cheaply on weekdays and that hosts concerts on weekends is a downtown anchor that pays for itself in foot traffic.
Residents in the loop
This part of my West Kelowna council platform exists because of one number. In July the city circulated its Community Safety Plan to residents for feedback, a plan the mayor called one of the most important for the community. It got 24 responses in two weeks. That is not consultation. That is a rounding error deciding how a city handles homelessness and mental health.
16. Advisory polls
An online platform where verified West Kelowna residents weigh in on major decisions before council votes. The city verifies that you live here. Results and response counts get published every time. The polls are not binding, because the law does not allow that, but council would have to explain a vote that goes against a clear result.
17. One notification channel
The same platform tells you about the road closure, the budget open house, and the rezoning on your street. One place, one sign-up, no more finding out from a neighbour's Facebook post.
18. Plain-language development signs
Every proposed development already gets a sign. I would require a second one that says in plain words what is proposed, how it differs from current zoning, and a QR code to the full application. The cost sits with the applicant, not the taxpayer.
Transportation and wildfire
The highway and the bridge get most of the frustration in West Kelowna, and most of it belongs to the province. The transportation pieces of a West Kelowna council platform have to be honest about that.
19. Put the city's provincial asks in writing, with numbers, and publish them
The highway and the bridge are provincial. The quality of our ask is not. Right now the asks are letters. They should be a public list with a cost, a priority, and a date, so residents know what we asked for and the province knows we are watching.
20. Funded versus listed
Council adopted an updated Transportation Master Plan in June. I would attach a public tracker showing which items have money and which are wishes. A plan full of unfunded lines is a brochure.
21. Publish what is funded each year for wildfire fuel mitigation and what got done
After McDougall Creek, nobody in this city needs convincing that mitigation matters. What we need is the annual number: dollars in, hectares treated, and what is next.
What this West Kelowna council platform does not promise
It does not promise a tax number. Any candidate who tells you a rate before seeing the budget is guessing. What I promise is that you will know what the number is buying and what it is not.
It does not promise to fix the bridge, grocery prices, or mortgage rates. Councillors who claim those are selling something.
It does not promise outcomes I cannot deliver with one vote. I have chaired a volunteer board mid-term when it needed someone and run operations where my name was on the results. I know the difference between what one person can decide and what one person can push. Everything above is in the second category, and I would push.
How to hold me to it
Every promise in this West Kelowna council platform has a number attached or a document that should exist. If I am elected, check for them. If they are not there by the end of 2028, ask me why, in public.
If you want to see how your views line up with this West Kelowna council platform and with council's recent decisions, the West Kelowna Council Alignment Calculator takes about four minutes. If you want the receipts on my background, they are on my about page. The short version of the campaign is on my candidate page, and my take on this year's tax decision is in the property tax post.
Voting day is Saturday, October 17. I will be at doors until then. Bring the hard version of the question.