Issues that matter
to Penticton.

Penticton’s rental vacancy rate climbed to 2.6% in 2025 — up from 1.2% the year before, and the healthiest it’s been since 2013. That’s proof that building works. But 2.6% is still below the healthy range of 3–5%, average rents went up anyway, and the city’s own housing needs assessment found it’s struggling to attract nurses and doctors partly because they can’t find a place to live. I believe the answer is to keep the momentum: build more homes — and make sure affordability is built into what comes next.

But Penticton just got a hard lesson in what happens when a city pins its housing strategy on a single mega-project. The Innovation District — pitched as 1,500 new units on 10 acres across from the Regional Hospital — was supposed to be the biggest residential development in the city’s history. Council changed the Official Community Plan and rezoned the land from industrial to mixed-use high density based on that promise. The developers marketed and sold presales. And then, in 2026, they pulled the plug. No building permits were ever submitted. Now there’s talk of converting the site into a hotel, seniors housing, and a large multi-use indoor sports and recreation facility. Let me be fair: indoor recreation space is a genuinely good idea — the whole region is short of it. But it isn’t the 1,500 homes Penticton was promised, and it isn’t the industrial land PIDA warned council not to give up, either. Either way, that’s 10 acres the city can’t get back.

My takeaway: Penticton can’t afford to bet its housing future on any single project, especially one controlled by out-of-town developers. The city needs a diversified housing strategy that doesn’t depend on one site or one promise. That means streamlining the permitting process for smaller infill developments — the duplexes, laneway houses, and missing-middle housing that fill gaps across existing neighbourhoods without requiring a mega-project to materialize. I’m an electrician — I work in the construction industry every day. I know what regulatory delays cost, and I know which ones are protecting safety and which ones are just adding time and money for no good reason.

Streamlining isn’t just a slogan — the city has actually made real progress here. Building permit reviews dropped from an average of 8 weeks in 2017 to roughly 2.5 weeks in 2018 after a major modernization push, and CloudPermit (the online application platform) launched in 2024. The staff who delivered those improvements deserve credit. But there’s more to do.

I have four specific commitments on permits and approvals: expand Residential Xpress — the city’s express permit stream that aims to review eligible applications in 1 to 14 business days, currently capped at single- and two-family projects — to include carriage houses, the new 3–4 unit small-scale housing the province now requires every municipality to permit, and minor commercial tenant improvements; publish actual permit performance data monthly, by permit type, so the public can see real averages and not just published targets; create pre-approved typical designs for infill duplexes, laneway houses, and small multi-unit so builders submitting standard designs get a streamlined review path; and assign a single project coordinator to major applications requiring multi-department review, so files don’t bounce between Building, Planning, Engineering, and Fire with each handoff resetting context.

My housing priorities: streamline permitting for infill and missing-middle housing through an expanded Residential Xpress program and pre-approved designs, publish permit performance data monthly so progress is visible to the public, work with BC Housing on underused city-owned and publicly held land, learn from the Innovation District experience by never again redesignating industrial land based on a developer’s promise alone, and oppose anything that adds unnecessary cost to new builds without a clear safety or community benefit.

Affordable housing and homelessness are deeply connected, but they’re not the same problem. Penticton has residents sleeping in parks and doorways, and many of those people are dealing with addiction and mental health crises that housing alone won’t solve. My position is simple: housing and treatment are two halves of one system, and neither works without the other. Treatment without housing sends someone back to the street the day they’re discharged — and the street undoes treatment fast. Housing without treatment puts a roof over active addiction and calls it progress. We haven’t solved the problem. We’ve just moved it indoors.

Penticton has lived both halves of this failure. The city already has over 150 supportive housing units operated through BC Housing — including facilities on Winnipeg Street and Skaha Lake Road — in a community with almost no treatment infrastructure to connect them to. There is no inpatient detox in Penticton. Residential treatment is roughly 25 beds at Discovery House — men only. A woman in the South Okanagan seeking residential treatment has nowhere local to go, and anyone seeking detox is travelling to Kelowna or further — if a bed is even available. That’s the system we’re asking supportive housing to feed into: a landing pad with no runway.

That’s the real lesson of the 50-unit tiny homes project council rejected 4-2 in late 2025. The province insisted the facility be designated “wet” — substance use permitted on site, with an overdose prevention service — as a condition of funding. The debate turned into a war over that label. I think the label was never the point. The point is that the province offered Penticton one half of a system and called it a whole solution: fifty more units of housing, in a city with zero local detox beds and no treatment pipeline for the people who would live in them. Whatever you think of wet housing, that math doesn’t work. And it doesn’t work in reverse either — if the province funded fifty treatment beds tomorrow with no transitional or supportive housing behind them, people would complete treatment and be discharged right back to the doorways they came from.

So my ask — at the council table, to Interior Health, to BC Housing, and to the province — will always be the same: fund both halves together, as one integrated system. When new supportive housing is proposed, the question is “where’s the treatment pipeline that serves it?” When treatment beds are proposed, the question is “where do people live during recovery, and where do they land when they finish?” Detox, residential treatment — including beds for women — recovery-oriented transitional housing, and supportive housing that’s connected to all of it. Penticton shouldn’t accept any one piece being sold as the whole answer, and it shouldn’t have to choose between them.

I supported the Car 40 program — a joint mental health crisis response unit pairing RCMP with health workers — and it’s the kind of practical, compassionate approach Penticton needs more of. I’ll advocate for expanded Car 40 capacity alongside the housing-and-treatment system above, because crisis response is the front door to that system — and right now the front door opens into a hallway with too few rooms.

This isn’t a choice between compassion and safety — Penticton needs both. Compassion means a real pathway: somewhere to stabilize, somewhere to get treatment, and somewhere to live while you rebuild. Safety means addressing the street-level disorder that affects businesses, residents, and the people struggling most — which only actually improves when that pathway exists. I’ll push for solutions that treat people with dignity and actually move them toward stable, healthy lives.

Most people think of wine and tourism when they think of Penticton’s economy. They’re important — but they’re not the biggest driver. Penticton’s industrial sector, represented by the Penticton Industrial Development Association, generates between $800 million and $1 billion in total economic impact every year. Half a billion dollars in direct sales flowing into the city from outside the province and outside the country — products manufactured right here and shipped to Australia, the Middle East, Europe, and South America. Companies like Waycon Manufacturing. Like AC Motor Electric, operating since 1956. These are the highest-paying private sector jobs in our community, with workers earning $60,000 to $80,000 a year.

And this sector is under threat. In 2025, Peerless — a trailer manufacturer that had been in Penticton for over 50 years — was bought out and moved its manufacturing to Saskatchewan. Nearly 80 jobs gone. That’s not ancient history. That happened last year, and it should be a wake-up call. Industrial land is shrinking — the Britco site was lost to housing development. Storage facilities are displacing productive manufacturing businesses on industrial-zoned land because they’re cheaper to operate, even though they create almost no jobs. Municipal taxes on industrial properties have doubled in four years. Electricity costs are punishing — one local manufacturer was paying $1 million a year in power costs a decade ago, and it’s only gone up since. Transportation access has deteriorated since the highway moved away from the industrial park. PIDA’s own past president has said the city needs “much greater investments in attraction and retention” just to stay competitive with communities up and down the valley who are actively recruiting these same businesses.

I’ll be a champion for Penticton’s industrial sector on council. Specifically, I’ll push for a formal industrial land strategy — something the city doesn’t currently have — to protect existing industrial-zoned land from conversion to storage or other low-employment uses. I’ll fight to keep industrial tax rates competitive. And I’ll push to grow the city-owned electric utility’s generating capacity (see Environment & Sustainability below) — because a city that owns its grid and generates more of its own power has options for supporting industry that no other Okanagan community has. I want to build that capacity first, honestly, before promising how it gets used.

I also want to bring back a tool Penticton has used successfully before: the Economic Investment Zone. From 2010 to 2019, the city ran an EIZ program that offered time-limited tax exemptions on the increased value of new construction in targeted areas. It worked — roughly 40 projects qualified, generating over $70 million in construction activity and more than 400 jobs, for a fraction of that in temporarily deferred taxes. The program lapsed in 2019 and was never renewed. I’ll push to create a new Economic Investment Zone aimed squarely at industry — incentivizing manufacturers to expand, redevelop, or relocate to Penticton, with the emerging UAV (drone) and aerospace sector as a prime target, so the tax incentive and the hub-building work below pull in the same direction. An EIZ doesn’t cost the city money up front; it forgoes a portion of future tax revenue on new value that wouldn’t exist otherwise — and once the exemption period ends, those properties pay full taxes on a much larger assessed value, permanently growing the tax base. Any new program would be built with clear entry points, time limits, and a defined end date, so it never becomes an open-ended giveaway.

Beyond protecting what we have, I want to grow what’s next. I have an ambitious goal — and I’ll be upfront that it’s the most ambitious thing on this platform: positioning Penticton as a centre for UAV (drone) development and testing in Western Canada. The opportunity is real and the model is proven. Pendleton, Oregon — a town smaller than Penticton — invested less than $500,000 to transform its quiet airport into one of America’s busiest drone test ranges. It now hosts companies like Amazon, Airbus, NASA, and Boeing, has created over 200 direct aerospace jobs paying $60,000 to $100,000 per year, and generates millions in annual economic impact.

Penticton has every advantage Pendleton had, and several it didn’t: a federally owned airport with underutilized capacity, diverse terrain for testing over lakes, mountains, orchards, and rangeland, Canada’s new streamlined BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) drone regulations, and a location in the heart of BC’s wildfire country — where firefighting drone technology is being actively developed and desperately needed. This isn’t hypothetical: BC’s own FireSwarm Solutions is already flying Transport Canada-authorized heavy-lift wildfire-suppression drones and testing across the province — exactly the kind of anchor company a Penticton test range should be courting. The startup costs? Funded through federal programs built for exactly this: PacifiCan grants, the new Regional Defence Investment Initiative (RDII) — which is delivering $67.5 million in BC for defence and dual-use projects, with applications open through March 2028 — and the Strategic Innovation Fund, plus a portion of the $2.3 million the city receives annually from Cascades Casino. Not property taxes.

And here’s my honest framing, because I won’t promise something no councillor can deliver alone: the airport is federally owned, the companies are private, and a hub is an outcome, not a bylaw. What I can promise is the work. In my first year, I’ll push council to commission a feasibility study and submit the PacifiCan funding application. If the math says go, Penticton moves with a head start. If it doesn’t, we’ll have spent grant dollars — not tax dollars — to find out. That’s how a city chases big opportunities without betting itself on them.

I’ll also be clear about what I won’t chase: data centres. They’re the shiny object of economic development right now, and they’re the wrong fit for Penticton — enormous power and water demands in a hot, dry valley, big land footprints on exactly the industrial land we’re already losing, and almost no permanent jobs per acre once construction ends. Every megawatt and every acre a data centre consumes is capacity I’d rather put behind manufacturers and aerospace jobs. Saying no to the wrong fit is part of having an economic strategy.

My economic vision is simple: protect the industrial base that already pays the bills, and build the next generation of industry on top of it. An industrial land strategy that stops the erosion. A revived Economic Investment Zone that rewards businesses for building here. A city-owned utility with growing generating capacity that keeps Penticton’s options in Penticton’s hands. A serious, feasibility-first run at a UAV (drone) hub that could bring aerospace jobs — and the industry conferences that come with them, filling the Trade and Convention Centre and downtown restaurants in the shoulder season (see Downtown Vibrancy). High-speed internet and tech-friendly infrastructure that let modern businesses operate from the South Okanagan. Tourism and agriculture aren’t going away — but they can’t be the only thing. A one-industry town is a vulnerable town. I want Penticton to be resilient.

A living downtown — full of events, festivals, and foot traffic — is good for businesses and residents alike. I want to invest in Penticton’s cultural life and make the downtown core buzz year-round, not just in peak tourist season.

I live in the downtown core. I see firsthand what a festival or event does for the local economy — restaurants busy, shops buzzing, people out walking. I’ll advocate for a dedicated events fund that supports true four-season programming — not just summer festivals, but shoulder- and off-season events like Frost Fest that bring life to the downtown core when the tourist crowds thin out. I want to work with the Downtown Penticton Business Improvement Area to reduce red tape for businesses hosting sidewalk events and pop-ups, and to ensure that Penticton’s growing reputation as an events destination translates into real, sustained foot traffic for local shops and restaurants. And I want Penticton competing harder for conventions: every conference the Trade and Convention Centre lands fills restaurants, patios, and hotel rooms in the months local businesses need it most — including the UAV and aerospace industry events my Economic Diversification plan is built to attract. A city chasing a drone hub should also be the city hosting the sector’s conferences.

The DPBIA’s recent launch of “The Blocks” — a new neighbourhood identity for the cluster of breweries, restaurants, and venues around Winnipeg Street and Westminster Avenue — is exactly the kind of community-led initiative council should be backing. Branding the area gives it a story. The launch of the Official Downtown Community Plan this fall is the chance to give it teeth.

My contribution: a formal entertainment district designation — written into the zoning bylaw as a downtown entertainment overlay and anchored in the new Official Downtown Community Plan, so it carries the durability of Official Community Plan policy rather than the mood of any one council — that takes The Blocks from a name on a tote bag to a lasting policy framework. The 2024 zoning rewrite already permits restaurants, bars, lounges, live music, and cabarets throughout the downtown commercial zones. The 2025 amendment removed downtown parking minimums and restricted drive-throughs to protect the pedestrian realm. The remaining barriers aren’t what can open — they’re how late it can stay open, whether it can put a patio out without a six-month permit dance, and whether someone moving into a new condo upstairs can shut a venue down with a noise complaint two years later.

A formal entertainment district policy would address all three. Tiered closing hours by sub-zone, so a venue in the core can stay open later than one bordering residential streets. Decibel-based noise standards that give operators a clear number to design around, instead of vague nuisance rules. Pre-approved patio templates that turn a months-long permitting process into a one-form approval. And a right-to-entertain disclosure requirement on residential sales and rentals in the district, so new residents know what they’re moving into — and existing venues aren’t shut down by complaints from people who moved in next door to a brewery and then complained about the brewery.

Rules are one half of the equation. Investment is the other. A formal entertainment district designation also opens the door to a targeted Economic Investment Zone — the same tool I’m proposing for industrial development, returned to the downtown core where the original 2010–2019 program first proved it could work. That program catalyzed the Landmark Cinema brownfield revitalization, the breweries and distilleries that anchor today’s entertainment cluster, and several major commercial expansions. A new downtown EIZ — covering both Main Street and The Blocks — would offer time-limited tax exemptions on the value of capital improvements: patio buildouts, heritage facade restoration along Main Street’s historic frontage, soundproofing investments that meet the new decibel standards, kitchen and venue upgrades, and mixed-use redevelopments that add residential density above active commercial frontage. Building owners and operators currently sitting on the fence about whether to invest get a real reason to break ground. The city forgoes a portion of future tax revenue temporarily; once the exemption period ends, those buildings pay full taxes on a permanently higher assessed value.

This isn’t about giving businesses a pass to do whatever they want. It’s about giving operators, residents, and visitors the predictability that makes a real entertainment neighbourhood work — the kind of predictability Gastown, Yaletown, and the Whyte Avenue districts already have. The DPBIA has done the branding work. Council’s job is to back it up with the policy framework — and the investment incentives — that make The Blocks and Main Street places people can count on for decades, not just for the launch party.

The lake-to-lake bike lane — and the South Main section in particular — became the most divisive infrastructure project in Penticton’s recent history. And the frustration was understandable.

Residents along South Main saw concrete barriers installed on both sides of a major thoroughfare, parking eliminated near their homes and businesses, lanes narrowed to the point where some people felt unsafe pulling out of their own driveways, and a design near the Sikh Temple that raised serious emergency access concerns. The project came in over budget at $9.1 million, up from the original $8 million estimate. Seventy-five people showed up to protest at City Hall. A public meeting about an infrastructure levy turned into a two-hour vent session about the bike lanes. Councillor Reynen himself said the project had “already caused enough headaches.”

I heard all of this — at doors, in conversations, and from people on both sides of the debate. Here’s where I land.

Active transportation infrastructure is a good thing for Penticton. Bike lanes, better sidewalks, and accessible routes help seniors who can’t drive, families who want their kids to ride to school safely, and everyone trying to get around without a car. That’s real. But good infrastructure has to be designed with the people who use the road every day — not imposed on them. And when residents say they feel unsafe pulling out of their driveways, or a business says they’re losing customers because nobody can park, those aren’t complaints to be managed. They’re design failures to be fixed.

What went wrong on South Main wasn’t the idea of a bike lane. It was the process. The design moved forward without enough iteration. Concerns from residents and businesses were heard too late — after the concrete was already being poured, not before. And once people felt ignored, every subsequent conversation about infrastructure became poisoned by that experience.

My position: the lake-to-lake route is built and it’s not getting torn up. But going forward, Penticton needs to do infrastructure differently. I’ll push for genuine community consultation at the design stage — not an information session after decisions are made, but real input that can change the outcome. I want full lifecycle cost estimates published before council votes on major projects. I want post-construction reviews that honestly assess what worked and what didn’t. And I believe any future cycling or transportation infrastructure should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis — not treated as a political litmus test where you’re either for all bike lanes or against all of them.

Infrastructure should make people’s lives easier. When it doesn’t, the answer isn’t to blame residents for being upset. It’s to do the work better next time.

Penticton property owners have been hit with steep annual increases four years running — 9.5% in 2023, 5.31% in 2024, 7.88% in 2025, and 6.26% in 2026. Compounded, that’s nearly a third more in property taxes than four years ago. Some of that reflects costs deferred by previous councils. Some reflects real infrastructure needs. But the cumulative impact on families and small businesses is real, and residents deserve a councillor who asks hard questions about every dollar before it’s spent.

I won’t insult your intelligence with a blanket tax freeze promise. The city has a $38 million fire hall project, aging infrastructure worth $1.4 billion, and growing demand for public safety. Those costs are real. But I also won’t accept that the only answer is to keep reaching into taxpayers’ pockets year after year.

Here’s what I’ll do differently. Penticton has revenue sources that aren’t being used to their full potential:

The casino. Cascades Casino generates roughly $2 million a year in provincial revenue-sharing for the city, plus $300,000 in lease payments — over $2.3 million annually that goes into a Gaming Reserve. I’ll direct a portion of that reserve toward economic development investments that bring back ten times what they cost.

The electric utility. Penticton is one of only five cities in BC that owns its own grid. The utility generates an annual dividend for the city. My solar plan will grow that dividend — not by raising electricity rates, but by generating city-owned power that costs less than what we buy wholesale from FortisBC.

Grants. Federal and provincial programs exist specifically to fund the kind of initiatives I’m proposing. The microgrid project council just approved secured over $5.6 million in external funding. I’ll pursue every available dollar from PacifiCan, Innovate BC, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and the FCM Green Municipal Fund before asking Penticton taxpayers for a cent.

The green bin program will be funded through a small utility fee — $3 to $5 per household per month — not property taxes.

My approach comes down to this: bring a tradesman’s eye to the budget. Know what things should cost. Know when something’s been padded. Know the difference between cutting corners and cutting waste. And most importantly — stop relying on property tax increases as the default answer to every question. Publish plain-language budget breakdowns so residents can see exactly where every dollar goes. Grow the revenue. Use the assets the city already owns. Chase the grants. Expand the tax base by bringing new industry and new jobs to Penticton.

Accountability for the Cost of an Empty Seat

Fiscal responsibility also covers what happens when things go wrong. Penticton’s experience with a council seat sitting empty for over two years — while taxpayers continue paying a councillor on mandatory leave who cannot perform any duties — exposed a gap in provincial law. The 2022 amendments to the Community Charter were the right call: officials facing serious charges should step away from their duties. But the law sets no limit on how long taxpayers pay for an empty seat, and no mechanism to restore representation to the voters who lost it.

There’s real momentum to fix this: Penticton’s own MLA has prepared legislation to extend mandatory-leave rules to provincial politicians, closing the gap in one direction. I’ll push council to advocate through UBCM for the other half. First, a 12-month threshold after which a councillor on mandatory leave transitions from paid to unpaid status — with full back-pay guaranteed if the charges are resolved in their favour. Second, a provision allowing council, by a two-thirds supermajority, to declare a temporary vacancy after 12 months and trigger a by-election, so voters aren’t left without representation for an entire term — with the original councillor’s right to seek office again fully preserved. These aren’t punitive measures. They protect the presumption of innocence and the public purse at the same time. Accountability isn’t a slogan. It’s a practice — and it should apply to the system itself, not just the people in it.

“I can’t promise your taxes will never go up. But I can promise that every time someone at that council table proposes an increase, I’ll be the one asking: have we used the casino money? Have we applied for the grant? Have we looked at what the utility can fund? And if the answer to any of those is no, the increase doesn’t have my vote.”

I believe in practical environmentalism — not slogans, but real programs that reduce waste, lower costs, and build a more resilient city. I have two specific plans:

A Curbside Green Bin Program

Right now, every food scrap in Penticton goes into the garbage and gets buried at Campbell Mountain Landfill. That’s 40% of our waste stream, by weight, producing methane underground instead of becoming compost that Okanagan farms could use. The RDOS has been trying to build a regional composting facility since 2016, but construction hasn’t started and the Agricultural Land Commission has rejected applications twice.

I won’t wait. In January 2025, Net Zero Waste Eastgate — a regional composting facility in the Similkameen Valley already serving Chilliwack — presented to council and offered at-cost processing at $50 per tonne, a fraction of what Metro Vancouver pays. I’ll push to launch an interim green bin program using Net Zero as a processing partner, getting bins on every curb within my first year on council, then transition to the RDOS’s local facility when it’s finally built. Estimated cost: $3–$5 per household per month on the utility bill — not your property taxes. Startup costs covered by provincial waste reduction grants.

Solar Power on City-Owned Buildings

Council unanimously approved a solar microgrid project in February 2026 — solar panels on four city buildings plus battery storage, primarily for emergency backup at the hospital. That’s a solid first step. I want to go further. The SOEC, the Convention Centre, the Aquatic Centre, Public Works yards, and fire halls all have large roofs. The new $38 million fire hall should be designed with solar from day one.

Penticton owns its own electric utility. Power generated by city solar panels has no FortisBC wholesale markup — it feeds directly into a grid the city controls. That means higher margins on every kilowatt-hour, reduced dependence on FortisBC rate increases, and a growing asset the city controls outright. I’m deliberately not promising today how every future kilowatt gets used — build the capacity first, and tomorrow’s council has options it doesn’t have today. Funded through the electrical reserve and grants — the same proven model as the microgrid. Pays for itself within 10–15 years. Produces essentially free power for decades after. With over 2,000 hours of sunshine per year, Penticton is one of the best locations for solar in all of Canada.

Nearly a third of Penticton’s population — over 11,000 people — is 65 or older. That’s one of the highest concentrations of seniors of any city in Canada, half again the national average. Another 3,200 residents will join that group within this council term. More than 5% of the city is 85 or older. In Penticton, seniors’ issues aren’t a special interest. They’re the city’s daily reality — and a platform that doesn’t address them isn’t a complete platform.

Here’s what frustrates me: the city already did the homework. In 2021, Penticton commissioned a full Age-Friendly Assessment and Action Plan. Hundreds of seniors participated — through surveys, community engagement, and a photovoice project where older residents documented the barriers they face every day. They told the city exactly what they needed: curb cuts that actually work at crossings. Public washrooms that are clean, accessible, and open year-round. Bus routes that don’t require crossing a busy arterial with a walker. Better connections between the Recreation Centre and the Seniors’ Drop-In Centre on South Main. Support to adapt their homes so they can age in place instead of being forced into care prematurely.

The plan laid out dozens of specific actions with timelines. Five years later, ask a senior on South Main how many of them they’ve noticed. The plan itself predicted this outcome — it warned that without funded coordination and clear ownership, the recommendations would stall. That’s exactly what happened. It’s the same pattern as everywhere else in this platform: good intentions, a report on a shelf, and no follow-through. Accountability isn’t a slogan.

My commitment is implementation. I’ll push council to formally adopt the Age-Friendly Action Plan’s outstanding recommendations into the city’s capital and operating plans with assigned responsibility and public progress reporting — starting with the annual accessibility audit, the public washroom expansion plan, the north-south transit connection, and a home adaptation support program that helps seniors stay in their own homes longer. None of these are big-ticket items. They’re the kind of practical, unglamorous work that makes daily life better for a third of the city — and most of them make the city more accessible for everyone, from parents with strollers to residents with disabilities.

On long-term care, I’ll be honest about jurisdiction the same way I am on treatment beds: Interior Health runs long-term care, not the city. But the numbers demand a louder municipal voice. Penticton has roughly 430 publicly funded long-term care beds for a senior population of more than 11,000 — and wait times at some facilities now stretch from nine months to a year and a half. As the 85-plus population grows, that gap only widens. I’ll use the council table to advocate relentlessly to Interior Health and the province for expanded long-term care capacity in Penticton — and I’ll make sure the city’s land use planning, permitting, and development processes never stand in the way of a care facility that’s ready to build. The same fast-track treatment I’m proposing for housing should apply doubly to seniors’ care.

Aging in Penticton also connects to the rest of this platform. The missing-middle housing strategy includes the single-level, accessible, smaller homes that let seniors downsize without leaving their neighbourhood. The infrastructure consultation commitments exist in part because seniors along South Main were among the loudest voices ignored on the bike lane. And a green bin on the curb, a safer crosswalk, and a bus that actually comes are worth more to most seniors than any speech about respecting elders. Practical help, delivered — that’s the plan.