My slogan is "Building a Community for Everyone." It's a big promise, so I want to show what it means at three stages of a life in Vernon: growing up here, building a life here, and growing older here.
Let's start with our kids.
A good place to grow up needs three things a city can actually deliver: places to play, safe ways to get there, and a home your family can stay in.
Places to play
- In the 2022 referendum, you asked for a new Active Living Centre. It is nearly complete, designed from the start so that children of every ability can use the pool, the change rooms and the indoor track.
- Kin Race Track Park is planned right behind it, for indoor and outdoor sports side by side.
- The playground at Marshall Fields (as well as many others) was designed and built as a full-access playground for all abilities.
- We re-naturalized the creek through Polson Park, and this year we expect to see sockeye salmon there for the first time in more than 75 years. That is a science lesson no classroom can match.
Safe ways to get there
- A park is only as good as the trip to it. I want the City's transportation dollars to start with sidewalks, then transit and multi-use paths, with fewer conflicts between cars, bikes and people on foot, so more kids can walk or ride on their own.
A home to grow up in
- Young families need more choices than a detached house on the edge of town. Gentle infill is already adding duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes that fit the street, close to schools, shops and services.
- We have helped deliver 600 non-market homes since 2018, and I want co-op housing to be a focus of Council's next term.
And when growing up gets hard
- The City gave a cash grant to the Canadian Mental Health Association for the new Youth Mental Health Foundry in downtown Vernon. Mental health care is a provincial responsibility, but our kids live here, so we helped.
None of this is only for families. A sidewalk that is safe for a seven-year-old is safe for a seventy-year-old. That is what a community for everyone looks like.
Watch
- Naming Our Active Living Centre
- Better Parks and Fields
- Restoring Our Creek in Polson Park
- Gentle Infill
Keep reading
Voting day is Saturday, October 17. When and where to vote