121: Inside Kelowna's Most Pressing Challenges & Ambitious Future Plans with Mayor Tom Dyas

00:00:00 Taylor Atkinson
Welcome back to the Kelowna Real Estate Podcast. I'm your mortgage broker host, Taylor Atkinson.


00:00:03 Matt Glen
And I'm your real estate agent host, Matt Glen.


00:00:05 Taylor Atkinson
Hold on. You are in a different office. What's going on,


00:00:09 Matt Glen
Matt? I have an announcement. I am going all in on commercial real estate. I am going to be doing exclusively commercial real estate from the second you hear this forward. And also I'm switching brokerages. I'm switching from Century 21 to Venture Commercial, a division of Venture Realty Corp. to focus on commercial real estate. This is a big deal for me. It's kind of been in the works for a bit, but now is the time to make a switch and the announcement. I also have to start off by thanking Century 21 for everything they've done for me and are still doing for me. Like I started my career there. They helped me launch during the worst time ever at the start of COVID. My career has been awesome there. All the people have been awesome there. Max, Anna, Shirley, Dean, everybody at that office. I've loved every second at that office and I still do love it there. The reason why I'm switching is not because of them. It really is because of me. I just want to do commercial real estate. I have helped a lot of families move. I love that too. But I think helping shape our community, like Kelowna, Vernon, Lake Country, I just want to be more in the know what's happening with businesses. And I made the decision to move over.


00:01:16 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. I mean, I'm so excited for you. It's been a fun journey to work with you on the residential side, but agreed. You've been doing quite a bit more commercial in the past few years and you've been getting very good at it. And likewise, the connections we're making, you know, from the podcast, like we've had Chris and Jay on, and we've spoken to lots of people, obviously from the city and on the community outside, it just seems like the natural path for you. Congratulations, man.


00:01:40 Matt Glen
Yeah. So I agree. So like you mentioned, I've done decent amount of commercial. Like we sold that five acres in Vernon on Anderson way, which was a huge sale of Vernon, like one of the top sales through experiences like that. You just realize that like you can have your say or you put your stamp on the community. Like I grew up in Vernon. I know the city. Like I used to run around where Anderson way was now. That was a field when I was a kid. I have literally lost golf balls in that field as a kid. And now I've sold the land to shape it for the next generation. And I just, I love that aspect of it. I love knowing what businesses are coming to town, like what businesses need to be here that aren't here yet that I can help bring here. How can I help businesses acquire buildings, land, you know, like help tenants, help investors get tenants. You know, like I've done quite a bit of it. I've been involved in a few different like sales and kind of bigger deals. And I just realized I wanted to focus on that. fully and then like you mentioned we had fris and jay wills on i just opened it up it was episode 95 and talking to them and just like hearing what they're talking about what their day -to -day is like the things they focus on and the people they know and the inside information they had about how the city was growing and what was happening here like at that point i had already done a couple commercial deals i'd actually talked to them quite a bit but just to be around people like that all day, every day. It's just an opportunity. I just can't pass it on. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to be in this office. Everyone here is fantastic. And I just cannot wait to get this new, like effectively a new career fired right up. I'm super excited and thankful for Century 21. At this moment, I have my personal house listed at Century 21. I'm referring all my residential lines to Century 21. I love that brokerage. I think it's great. It's just, I need a bit of a change for myself, all on commercial real estate starting right now.


00:03:24 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. And that's the way to do it. I mean, Yeah. To double down century 21 has been amazing for us, a huge supporter of the podcast. So, you know, thank you to them and Emily still works there and there's a lot of good real estate agents there, but I agree. If you're going to go into commercial, you got to go all in, you know, it's hard to keep your foot in each one and yeah, venture commercial is just a great organization. So yeah,


00:03:45 Matt Glen
super excited, man. Stay tuned. There'll be more to come, but this is the official announcement.


00:03:49 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. Well, I saw the little promo on Instagram, the little video and you know, they didn't show your face and it, but like very subtly dropped a little clone real estate. My video was awesome.


00:03:58 Matt Glen
video was awesome. The only problem with that video is that I couldn't share it on my own because it would defeat the whole purpose of having a promo video if, uh, yeah, I did it. So yeah, it's awesome. I probably will share it at this point, but it's, uh, yeah, great. Super excited all around for this.


00:04:12 Taylor Atkinson
Great, man. I mean, to talk about shaping the city and commercial real estate and small businesses and, you know, kind of having your finger on the pulse and guests that we've had on in the past. Well, today's guest who we've been trying to get on for a while is Mayor Tom Dias. It was a great show. I love speaking with anyone from the city. City of Kelowna has been also a really good supporter of the podcast. Yeah, he was awesome. He was very even keeled and just, yeah, I think there's so many intricacies of how the city works. uh just the general public we just don't know yeah it was cool to share the platform with him yeah tom was a great guest great person to talk to obviously super knowledgeable it's funny when we ask him questions like what's the most pressing issue of the city is like there's a lot of pressing issues for the city so like what is kind of the hottest topic right now and you just tell talking to him he's just super passionate about where kelowna is going and what kelowna needs and our city's in good hands with him right now


00:04:46 Matt Glen
tom was a great guest great person to talk to obviously super knowledgeable it's funny when we ask him questions like what's the most pressing issue of the city is like there's a lot of pressing issues for the city so like what is kind of the hottest topic right now and you just tell talking to him he's just super passionate about where kelowna is going and what kelowna needs and our city's in good hands with him right now


00:05:07 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. And I mean, there is a municipal election coming up this year in the fall. So I think now's the time to start, you know, speaking to people that are involved in that and start educating herself and figure out which. Right.


00:05:20 Matt Glen
Has not declared that he's running as hard as we tried to get him to, he said he will in the next couple of weeks say either way, if he's running or not, but, uh, yeah, obviously you're going to judge the mayor on how their incumbency is looking right. And I, yeah, he's not afraid to talk about it.


00:05:33 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. And there's been some super, I mean, like everything globally, but like, you know, down to the municipal level, there's been a lot of volatility in terms of legislation, Airbnb stuff, DCC fees. We talked about property tax, like exemptions, how to stimulate the local economy, how to get developers building the airport. Like there's so many. Yeah. Crime and safety. We spoke about a lot. There's a lot of proactive things we were talking about with Tom, but there's also only so much, you know, you can do in terms of. at a municipal level, which that's kind of where the disconnect is for the general public. So yeah, amazing show. Obviously, you know, we think everyone should be listening to this one specifically. You know what the best takeaway about this episode was?


00:06:13 Matt Glen
know what the best takeaway about this episode was? We found out that Tom is a listener of our podcast. You know, everyone and their dog is listening, but you don't really expect everyone in their mirror. So that's a, that was a nice. Yeah.


00:06:25 Taylor Atkinson
And with that, like with, you know, hopefully getting a bigger fan base, Kelowna now. Here we come again. We're into the voting round. Obviously we want to get the word out there and get a little bit of a pat on the back for having a best local podcast. So if you have the ability, please get out there and tick us in for a vote. Yeah. Try and get the good word out for us.


00:06:47 Matt Glen
Yeah. Please vote for us. We've done bronze two years in a row. We need to get a couple spots up there. We need the gold.


00:06:54 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. So yeah. Kelowna now, it's a bit of a slog to work through the websites to get your vote in, but we would absolutely appreciate it.


00:07:02 Matt Glen
Yeah. And also like while you're voting for us, vote for all your other favorite people coming through. Because like you go through, you pick all the topics and you just go through like, man, I went through when we were doing the nominations, I was like going through, I was like, man, this is kind of cool. I can support all these different businesses by just looking here. So yeah, spend 15 minutes and do it. Obviously do ours first, but. Yeah.


00:07:23 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, enjoy the show, guys, and get out and vote for Kelowna now and prepare to vote for the municipal election coming up. Yeah, a lot of things going on. And you can get all fired up with this great episode that we have with Mayor Tom Dias.


00:07:32 Matt Glen
fired up with this great episode that we have with Mayor Tom Dias.


00:07:38 Taylor Atkinson
Okay, welcome to the show, Mayor Tom Dias. Thank you so much for joining us. How's it going today?


00:07:43 Tom Dyas
It's going well. It's going well. And, you know, I truly appreciate the opportunity of having this discussion with you. I have seen a number of your podcasts. Nice. That are sent out live and other individuals that you've spoken to. And so I was glad when you reached out and asked if I could be a part of your podcast.


00:08:00 Matt Glen
Yeah. Happy to have you on. We've had a few people from the city and they've all been great conversations. So let's keep it going. Yeah.


00:08:04 Tom Dyas
I've seen a number of them. So yeah.


00:08:06 Taylor Atkinson
Awesome. Yeah. Well, let's maybe start, I mean, obviously it's a Kelowna real estate podcast, so there's lots to talk about real estate wise, but I guess maybe in the last few years, there's been a lot of changes. Do you just kind of want to start by talking about, you know, you being in office and what that's meant to you and kind of the direction you've taken the city in the last few years?


00:08:24 Tom Dyas
Certainly. I mean, it's been a little over three and a half years now. You know, initially at the beginning, there was a substantial learning curve to kind of get to the point of understanding public operations. as opposed to private operations. We just had, I was at a dinner last night, which was for the past presidents of the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce. And part of that conversation that we had with a lot of different kinds of business leaders was the importance of when you're looking at doing any type of. management, control, or looking at being a mayor, what is the structure that you do initially to kind of get everybody rowing in the same direction, so to speak. And the first thing that this council did and that we put in place was a very strong refocus and basically got back to the basics on some of the issues that council has to deal with. Really it covered off three key areas, which kind of is that. core element of how everything else is being steered forward. And the first one was with regards to having that right structure in place, aligning all staff members and the resources and our priorities all together and establishing action items so that we knew exactly what kind of the ground rules were and what we wanted to try to accomplish and how we were going to kind of action to get there. And the first one was in finances. We restructured how we budget. We restructured into service -based budgeting and that service -based budgeting really worked on breaking down the spending of the city by services so that it was very detailed with regards to what we were going to deliver to the community. And service -based budgeting is exactly that. If you want to deliver more services, you increase the spending. If you want to look at reducing the services, you decrease some of the spending. So that was very helpful. We established more audits. We increased our financial reporting. We started investing our assets through the Municipal Finance Authority and their pooled funds for higher returns. Then, secondly, we looked at delivery on our infrastructure. when we're going to look at delivering projects what we do with those projects project bundling and an integrated project delivery process which basically allowed us to look at the projects we were going to deliver and analyze them before we started to build on them And that was in conjunction with the finances. And it allowed us to look at advancing things like the Parkinson Recreation Center, the Mission Glenmore, Rutland Community Centers, how we looked at increasing our housing supply, and then also, you know, Clement Crosstown Connector. And those things were all key, you know, to look at us putting those items in place. So it's the restructuring priorities, the finances that we did, and then also how we deliver infrastructure. And collectively, all of them together are working in conjunction and they're still allowing us to have one of the lowest and most consistent tax rates in the province. I mean,


00:11:14 Taylor Atkinson
mean, anyone that's in Kelowna can comment that Kelowna is an incredible city and it's evolving the way it needs to. And you guys seem to be kind of the front leader when it is, you know, working with the province. Some of obviously like some hot topic discussions right now are, you know, Airbnb, DCCs, some infill housing. Do we want to maybe start with Airbnb since it's pretty relevant? information right now yeah definitely you know we were very very grateful with regards to airbnbs and looking at bringing that


00:11:36 Tom Dyas
definitely you know we were very very grateful with regards to airbnbs and looking at bringing that forward it was a project which was a year and a half in the working it wasn't something that just came about when the province initially mandated that we were unable to have airbnbs within our community other than principal homes with secondary type of residences we knew that there was a series of areas within this community that had been zoned for airbnbs previously individuals acquired those properties based upon that assumption but we had to follow legislation that was imposed upon me municipalities. So we had to come up with ways and we did that through different programs to accelerate some of the development within this community to increase supply. to allow us to get to a level where our vacancy rate was at a point where we were able to kind of match legislation that was put out by the province. And then we needed to advocate. So I know we make the announcement on one day, but it was kind of years in the background work to make that all come together. We now have within our community, Airbnbs that would be available for principal residences that have a secondary residence within their community or within their building that stays in place. But now we've established areas. specific areas, sub -zones, so to speak, within the community, and especially around those properties that were initially zoned for Airbnbs, that they would now be available to use and to rent out as an Airbnb. couple of items there. One is their strata would have to be on side and in agreement that they wanted Airbnbs within their building. And the other item is that it's not a blanket Airbnb throughout the whole city because we do know that there were many neighborhoods that were disturbed by having houses in their neighborhood that were treated more or less like a hotel and they weren't enjoying their lifestyle within their own community. So we haven't gone to that extent. What we're doing is we've gone back. We now have the opportunity to introduce it back into our community. We're taking this step of housing that was previously zoned for it and not doing too much because we don't want to go to a point where the good work that we've done to get our vacancy rate out is deteriorated substantially by having a blanket amount across the whole city again.


00:13:57 Matt Glen
Like what happens if the vacancy rate goes down in the future? Does this null and void all these changes?


00:14:02 Tom Dyas
No, if it gets below the percentage again, would probably be a discussion that we would have with the province at this point in time. And, you know, we suspect that there may be a little bit of an adjustment on this. But collectively, with all of those zonings that we put in place, it has the availability of about 2100 units kind of throughout the city if they all chose to have Airbnb. But they don't all choose to have Airbnb. There's only roughly about 1000 of them or 900 of them that had Airbnbs last time or had a license for Airbnb last time. And we have about 450 homes that have principal residences. So we know we're sitting somewhere in that range of 1 ,400 or 1 ,500 potentially available units within the community. When we look at the growth that we're having in the other areas with regards to the rental products and things, and again, this is a little bit of forecasting, but we think there'll be a little bit of an adjustment, but not to the point where it will take us back to where we were four years ago at under 1%. A little bit of an adjustment as in?


00:15:04 Matt Glen
little bit of an adjustment as in? They can see rates coming down again.


00:15:08 Tom Dyas
Potentially. Yes. But there's also more product that is coming online and there's more occupancy permits that are coming into play. So there's a little bit of predicting the future, but it's also trying to balance out, you know, both directions. I think like to be, you know,


00:15:20 Taylor Atkinson
think like to be, you know, fully transparent, obviously my position was like, I was pretty frustrated when obviously the province came out with their legislation, but then the city came out with, you know, further restrictions. You know, I'm not naive to, it's not a very difficult. position to be in in terms of the city, right? We want to have, you know, investors that bought these property and then two on the other side are, you know, housing needs. So it's not an easy position to be in, but I guess what was the mindset to come out with more restrictions at a municipal level? Like above and beyond the province. When Airbnbs first started and I kind of first came into office,


00:15:53 Tom Dyas
Airbnbs first started and I kind of first came into office, it was something that we as a city, before the province came out with their legislation, we as a city were going to look at saying, okay, we truly need to look at Airbnb rentals throughout our community. Because as many frustrated individuals as there are on saying, you know what, I'm not able to get Airbnb or I'm not able to rent Airbnb. We have just as many frustrated individuals within this community saying, you know what, I go home on a Friday. Friday night and, you know, I'm woken up at two or three o 'clock in the morning because the place next to me is a, you know, is a hotel.


00:16:28 Matt Glen
It has 24 people in the pool.


00:16:30 Tom Dyas
Yeah. Some of the pictures I saw that got sent to me from some of those parties, you know, there were pictures which are showing that how they affected neighborhoods. So we were on routes to looking at making some of those changes because of the bylaw calls, because of the cost of our kind of do it. So we continued through that path, not knowing. what we know today yeah knowing that we needed to kind of make some changes hindsight is always extremely extremely powerful in these situations but we knew that we were getting excessive disruptions within our neighborhoods we knew that our vacancy rate was down below one percent we needed to kind of make some of those adjustments because rents were continually increasing there wasn't any break there and vacancies weren't so to answer your question it was just a matter of how do we best manage this at this particular point in time legislation which came in kind of after the fact and then changed everything substantially on, you know, what we needed to do in process. And it also gave us a little bit of breathing times to establish a stronger route possible. And again, I mean, going back to the question about short -term rentals, I mean, I'm so grateful that as of June 1st, when we have, you know, all of the events coming here, the Memorial Cup, the basketball, the BC Lions, BC Summer Games, everything, it was a lot of work, but I'm so grateful that we were able to, and the nice thing about it, not knowing if you know, but we changed legislation throughout the province. So before, it would have always been November 1st. And so we changed the legislation. So now it's reviewed in February and any other community in the province when they're looking at it would have a June 1st effective date. Oh,


00:17:58 Matt Glen
I didn't realize that was the whole province. I thought that was a Kelowna exemption.


00:18:02 Tom Dyas
It is a Kelowna exemption. We got the only exemption this time, but we changed the legislation moving forward.


00:18:08 Matt Glen
Oh, okay. So only Kelowna this year, but going forward if you opt out. Only Kelowna this year.


00:18:11 Tom Dyas
Kelowna this year. And I was down in Vancouver with a bunch of mayors last week and they weren't really happy about it. Yeah,


00:18:18 Taylor Atkinson
that's awesome. Like that is my personal stance with Kelowna. Like I said before, like we are kind of the front. runner in terms of evolving.


00:18:27 Matt Glen
So yeah, we appreciate the work you guys have done. Before we move on, were you working with Gavin Dude to get this done? Because he seemed to be pretty vocal about this issue. I'd had discussions with Gavin and Gavin was aware that this was a concern of our residents,


00:18:34 Tom Dyas
had discussions with Gavin and Gavin was aware that this was a concern of our residents, but no, our alignments with our city staff and working alongside our city staff and working alongside the government's minister, the ministry staff, all of those particular items was completely separate. But obviously when, you know, any of our Or MLAs or any individuals who are in government recognize that there's needs within the community and they lean in a little bit. That's always definitely appreciated as long as it's always respectful, right? We were having positive discussions and kind of working this way for a long time. And like I said, it was about a year and a half or better in the working. It just gets announced on one day.


00:19:14 Matt Glen
For the past few years, I don't know how long, five, six years, it feels like Kelowna was always at the top of the fastest growing city in Canada or like one of. And now I think we're down, I don't know, to a regular pace. We're in the middle of the pack of growth. Like as a mayor, like do you want to see us at the top of that pack every year or is the middle of the pack good? Like I'm honestly just curious about like, do you always want to be the fastest growing city or is it kind of good to be in the middle of the pack sometimes?


00:19:38 Tom Dyas
I would say, you know, top 10, but underneath the top 10, maybe if you got to kind of the top five, there's a balance in there because. You want to be able to kind of grow and growth within this city and within this community is definitely going to happen. And it comes back upon us to say, okay, how are we going to look at managing that growth? How are we going to look at advancing infrastructure that it needs? Everything from water to sewer to parks to playgrounds to facilities. So how is that going to be managed? And we don't receive from either the federal government or provincial government. consistent funding to assist us to grow that infrastructure in order to accommodate our residents. So we do want to see growth because growth is good. It creates employment, it creates vibrancy, all of those other items within the community, but it's just managing it so that it's managed appropriately throughout the community.


00:20:34 Taylor Atkinson
And so with that, with the growth and coming from the Airbnb conversation, like obviously housing affordability is probably one of the top things you guys have been working on. Has the vacancy and extra, you know, purposeful rentals and condos, is that helping with it enough to move the needle? Or, you know, do you want to talk about DCCs now as well? Like what is the city doing in terms of to be proactive in terms of helping affordability?


00:21:01 Tom Dyas
Well, when we look at kind of our housing starts, you know, that have happened and where our housing starts were in 2024 and where our housing starts was in 2025, we have reached our targets that were put forth by the provincial government to look at reaching all of those housing targets. We basically built about 3 ,500 homes in 2024 and, you know, over about 4 ,000 in 2025. So that is positive from that standpoint. number of years ago, a program that allowed individuals to build rental housing and they would receive a deferral on their taxes that they needed to pay for a period of 10 years. It gave those rental buildings and the individuals who are developing those rental buildings, the ability to make those projects pencil out. And we're seeing the benefits of that collectively kind of throughout the community, because a lot of that development is based upon them accessing that particular program. But we heard very loudly and I do want to thank UDI for their professionalism and kind of reaching out to myself and the board and all of those individuals and over kind of the last six months. And again, it's one of those things that you announce on one day, but you spend, you know, months kind of through the process. And we kind of started this just around November of last year to recognize that building had slowed down. And with that slowing down, the industry was saying that it just wasn't a small glip. It was something that could be around for a period of time and we needed a little bit of help. So is there an opportunity to kind of lean in? and so we did lean in just a week or so ago we reduced our dccs by 25 percent on you know whatever building is taking place and it gives them a window of time of two years to look at whether or not this makes enough of a difference for them to kind of advance that project and shortly after we did it on the monday on the tuesday i had received a couple of emails from a number of individuals who are looking at advancing projects within this community and their words were that you know what this was potentially on stall right now because we didn't think it would work out but because of our costs going down on a per door basis it now works out for us so we're going to look at you know continuing this or advancing this yeah i mean monetary value it obviously helps and it must help in terms of confidence level too right like we've probably had developers


00:23:15 Taylor Atkinson
i mean monetary value it obviously helps and it must help in terms of confidence level too right like we've probably had developers in Kelowna that are feeling a little more restricted, whether it's a short term rental stuff or just the cost to acquire land here. But if you have, you know, municipal government kind of moving in that direction, like that's just a vote of confidence. Right. So. Yeah. Awesome.


00:23:36 Tom Dyas
You know, the fast track infill housing program that we tried to initiate. So when somebody is looking at building in particular areas, we've got that timing down where you're able to establish the permit, you know, within a month, that's a huge benefit in those areas. The rental programs, you know, the DCC relief. As a municipality, we are a portion of what the overall expenses are that, you know, a builder or somebody who's building something incurs. There's, you know, just inflation costs with regards to all of the products that they're acquiring. There's other type of costs that are outside of municipality costs. There's demand, you know, which is a key part of it too. And that seems to be at a little different position right now. But I believe this industry has probably seen this picture before. And, you know, we want to try to reach out to try to help them a little bit right now. And hopefully that little bit of an assistance gets them to a point where they just continue to, you know, be strong once again.


00:24:31 Matt Glen
Yeah, like Taylor and I talk all the time, like what can come down, like land costs, building costs, labor costs. I think anywhere you can take it, kind of take the wind right now. Yeah,


00:24:39 Tom Dyas
it is. There's that whole economics aspects to it with regards to supply and demand. And if we're able to kind of find a way to assist builders to create a little bit more. supply within our community and the demands because of you know, going back to kind of the community and, you know, how fast it's growing and things that nature is there. And then the offshoots to this is we provide, you know, the employment aspects of it, everything else that goes with that happening within the city. There can be a lot of positives there.


00:25:10 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. When we spoke to Ryan Smith, I think it was almost two years ago, he coined a good phrase, like we're almost our own worst enemy because the city is developing, you know, such beautiful spaces, parkland, like we're spending money on the infrastructure. But with that comes, you know, demand that people want to live. here and then the cost of housing goes up. So what's the balance, right?


00:25:29 Tom Dyas
Yeah, and that's true. And then when we look at kind of the requests, so when we say, you know, whether there's a park area or something like that, that's going to be an established neighborhood or whether we're trying to kind of develop and bring it into a new neighborhood, we'll look at kind of DeHart Park for an example. That's a piece of land that sat there forever with really nothing on it, which is in an established neighborhood that's been around for a fairly long time. We were able to realize that this was something that needed to advance because there's a generation of children and there's people that live within that community. And yes, it can sit as, you know, bare land, but it doesn't kind of offer the services that we'd like to try to offer. And the spinoff to that is, you know, hopefully that area now has become that much more valuable for somebody to move into and purchase. So, you know, not only building, but also maybe reselling your house somewhere down the road.


00:26:21 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. I mean, that park is full. 24 set, like, you know, I'm not far away from it and my kids get good use out of it, but it is a valuable investment. Like obviously it comes at a cost, but like there are hundreds of kids there every day. So it's awesome.


00:26:35 Matt Glen
That park is awesome. Not just that park. There's a ton of new parks around the city. You've been doing a great job. Well,


00:26:40 Tom Dyas
and it was interesting because I remember having a discussion. years back and somebody was saying that you know the city has acquired land for parks and the heart was one of them the other one is sourced so that you know we're working on right now there's a big chunk of land in there that we're working on so the city has acquired land but the land is sitting kind of you know undeveloped and maybe not the most attractive looking or whatever it happens to be and through some of that refocusing, we've said, okay, what can we do now to make, you know, those neighborhoods, people don't have to drive somewhere else. They have those services kind of right in their neighborhood. And what can we do to advance those?


00:27:16 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. With that, like in terms of spending money on, you know, city infrastructure bias, because, you know, Matt and I both have young kids going into, you know, school and education system. Does a city at a municipal level have the ability to like top up school districts in terms of like build schools, add, you know, extra salaries to teachers, like to facilitate a better education system here or like with health care, like does the city get involved or is that all provincially, federally taken care of? A great question.


00:27:46 Tom Dyas
great question. And so the city itself. The lane that we are in, if we were to kind of look at our budget and our budget has about 33 different specific areas that we are to look at managing as a city. And that deals with, you know, water, sewer, you know, landfill, airport, you know, all of those particular things that we manage as a city. Nowhere within our budgets and nowhere within any of the, you know, structure for any municipality, does it deal with anything to do with healthcare? Does it do anything with regards to schools? And does it have to do anything with regards to mental health addictions and crime and safety other than our RCMP force, our bylaws, things we do to that nature? There has been a downloading onto municipal governments. to deal substantially with regards to the crime and safety area. Anything that we're doing to try to manage people, to, you know, keep the community safe, that has all been downloaded upon a municipality. And we did a study just a while ago and it was in excess of $2 million a year that has kind of been put upon our shoulders. plus how we respond to those. We can't control anything around addictions. We can't control anything around mental health. So those are all interior health and the health authority. And with schools, it's all basically its own ministry out of the province. So we can't have anything there with regards to crime and bail reform and legislation. We don't have any say in any of that. So to answer your question, no, we don't have any say in any of that. Can we assist in certain areas? Well, we deal with all of the crime and safety. With regards to schools, we have discussions with the school board with regards to land. Is there land coming available if they're looking at building new schools, but not anything to do with the development, offsetting their costs or anything to that nature. That all has to go through the ministry and stay in that area. And the same with regards to health authorities. They have an oversight. We are kind of a child of the province, so they have an oversight if they... want to come in, like the house center that they put in the downtown core, they can kind of implement and put in place without a lot of consultation with the city.


00:30:03 Taylor Atkinson
That's too bad. Like, obviously if, you know, we have a profitable city, you know, good revenue, it'd be great to be able to, to allocate some of that there. And you do hear obviously people like this winter, it seemed like every other week. you know there's a break in entry downtown small local businesses like even for me personally like our house got broken into last week somebody came in the garage stole my bike a bunch of tools and it really hits you it's like you know someone came into your space but like where's the disconnect in I guess the province to the city for that, like not that there aren't easy solutions, but I guess what's the city working with at a provincial level to try and, you know, add on more police force or like you guys advocate at a provincial level and that's kind of where their funding comes from.


00:30:47 Tom Dyas
So when we're looking at the funding, when it comes to us for RCMP officers or bylaw officers or everything that is dealt directly out of our budgets. So we currently at this point in time, annual budget for RCMP is about $60 million. When we look at the auxiliary help that we provide to the RCMP, because we have a series of staff who are working alongside to assist the RCMP to advance whatever they're dealing with administratively, it's roughly about another $27 million. So we know exactly what we're spending on RCMP and those services. Then when we add in bylaw and those other items. So it's a substantial cost to us as a community. There is no subsidy or offset that we receive from the province with those. There's a 10 % that we receive on the RCMP kind of on a federal level, having them here. But other than that, the rest of the expense is ours. Smaller communities may get up to about 30 % of that offset, but once they get a population greater, they don't have that anymore. So when we're on our own. What we do is we kind of say, okay, what is potentially within our lane? And that kind of goes through, you know, what we have done with regards to hiring new RCMP officers. We basically brought in about 33 new RCMP officers. We brought in about 18 new bylaw. We've hired new firefighters. We put a community safety officer that was a project initiative. So the project came in and said, well, if you establish a community safety officer within an area, there is an offset from the province. So we established. one in Rutland. We've just established one in the downtown core in Midtown. So they're working. We've brought back the RCMP auxiliary program, which will be extremely beneficial to the community. We've initiated the CCT program and then for business owners, and there's a substantial shopping list of the things that we have initiated as a municipality to kind of do what we can do within our lane, like the rebate program for small businesses in the downtown core or throughout the city, anywhere. in any of the areas if they have windows broken we'll give them up to three thousand dollars to assist with regards to their cost on replacement asking them to kind of put in windows that won't break as easily into the future so everything that is within our lane we're looking at trying to do It's the things that sit outside of our lane, as I said, like the mental health, the addictions, the legislation, those are things we're truly not able to kind of, you know, deal with. And, you know, that was kind of one of the key reasons why I went back to Ottawa. And I was, I think the only mayor kind of throughout the whole country who was asked to speak to the justice committee with regards to bail reform and the importance of, you know, changing that into Bill C -14 so that there's more teeth and we're not able to kind of just do that revolving door continually of individuals continuing to cycle.


00:33:41 Matt Glen
Arresting the same nine people over and over and over again.


00:33:43 Tom Dyas
Yeah. And I did kind of state the facts. We had 13 individuals within this community that had over, you know, about 1500 crimes. They all had about 90. And so they're just continually, and the advocacy that we did was helpful. I mean, I've seen come up a little bit now and in some of the reports that some of the judges are turning around and not allowing that bail to happen. And that's the advocacy. And just to kind of circle back a bit, it goes back to kind of what you had mentioned with regards to the schools and the school boards and all the rest of that. We really don't have a role in assisting with regards to capital assistance, but we have a very strong role in making sure that we speak to the ministers if there's things needed within our community or residents.


00:34:25 Taylor Atkinson
In your last three and a half years term, what's one of like the most difficult things you guys have had to deal with at council? And what's been kind of the... most fun or like your best achievement you're most proud of in the last term here?


00:34:38 Tom Dyas
You know, without a doubt, I mean, the most difficult is crime and safety. It's a huge concern for residents. It's a huge concern for community, for business owners. So getting a true understanding on what we could do here as a city and what we can't do and what we have to kind of advocate for. One of the examples that I'd shared recently with individuals was the tiny homes that we put into place throughout the community. I was in Toronto with the city manager and we were walking kind of the trade show floor. And in walking the floor, we saw there was tiny homes there and we thought, okay, this is something that, you know, we think there'd be an avenue for within our community. We brought it back to BC Housing and said, this is what we want to do. We want to kind of advance this. We couldn't get it anywhere. Like they wouldn't accept it because it didn't fit the model. We built a plan. We kind of built the case. We went back to them. We received it. We now have 180 within our community and all of the service providers are saying it is. the best item because we've moved 125 individuals through that 180 into either supportive housing, jobs or back home to family. And then it's kind of backfilling from there. That one is one that I'm very proud of, you know, to kind of say that is there. It's a spinoff to kind of dealing with the crime and safety element, but it has been the one that's consumed all of council to a great degree on how we look at dealing with that. And everybody around here has been very responsive in implementing programs. Perfect example is the rail trail. It took us a number of years to do it because it's not something you can do overnight, but the plan was there that we needed to make certain that that was opened up so individuals could kind of ride through. downtown, get on there and continue to ride through, you know, not have to go through the industrial area that will all be reopened and redesigned. There's been some negative parts of that because it's kind of stirred it up a bit. So some of those individuals have come back out into our community. But what was happening within that area itself was not safe for our community. You know, without getting into the details, there was a lot of very, very unsafe items there that might've got to a point of, you know, getting to a far of a worse place. So we've done that and we need to continue to build upon that. Now people with the way we set up, we'll be able to just continually ride along that and ride out to the airport or wherever they want to go. Then we've also expanded, you know, been able to open up that section of rail trail out past the airport. So you don't have to come up onto the highway and move. that it's interesting you ask the question and it ends up being it's just a matter of kind of what file pops out of my head because there's so many other things that we're kind of you know we're kind of we're kind of looking at implementing and doing one of the ones that i think is great that has come to the community is the refocus that we've had on economic prosperity you know, how we've kind of established that committee, how we're looking at moving that forward. All of the Briar, the CCMAs, the Memorial Cup, the BC Lions, all of these particular items have substantial economic spinoff and none of this is by accident. It's all by plan to say, okay, here's an avenue. People want to come to this community. Let's look at bringing events here. Now we're backing Matt up with saying, okay, let's make sure we engage with larger companies to build jobs here too. And that's what we're working at now.


00:37:43 Taylor Atkinson
Yeah. And I think a little plug for, for our own show, we had Doug Gilchrist on, I don't know what is 20 shows ago or something. And like some really informative stuff, like as a. local of Kelowna, you just don't really know what Kelowna is doing proactively or how involved you are to make the city prosperous. And like, yeah, he was a fantastic guest. So yeah, anyone that's listening, I think you should circle back and listen to that. And then in terms of, you know, the future planning, what are you most excited for Kelowna? Like in the next five years, kind of what's your ideal? you know, vision of Kelowna.


00:38:17 Tom Dyas
To circle back on Doug's, I did watch Doug's and I thought it was very, very informative. And definitely, without a doubt, he, you know, digs in every day, you know, in the best interest of kind of the community overall. So, you know, good that that information is being put out there because there's a lot of work that's happening. And that's why things like this are helpful. And I thank you for the time because it allows, you know, individuals to be able to share or see a little bit of what's happening. Just to stick on Doug for a second,


00:38:40 Matt Glen
stick on Doug for a second, the positives of our airport. Like we knew it was a positive, but wow, his episode was eye opening for Taylor and I for sure. I imagine our listeners too, although they're probably smarter than us, but that was a, it was a great episode to know. Yeah.


00:38:52 Tom Dyas
Yeah. Departures terminal, the implementation of that departures terminal, the thousand stall parkade, which is coming, the new hotel, you know, which will be implemented out there. That whole section, there is discussion right now where we're looking at kind of, okay, what do we do with regards to the next expansion, which goes beyond the existing terminal? You know, how do we. the correct turnaround space and wingspan for larger planes to come in. And so when larger planes come in now, we have more direct flights to areas that we have to do connections to right at this particular point in time, Hawaii, Europe, things along those lines. So there is a lot of planning in that. I've been more towards Europe right now,


00:39:30 Matt Glen
I've been more towards Europe right now, three years ago.


00:39:34 Tom Dyas
Fair enough. Fair enough. You know, that's obviously in my sights is something that's extremely exciting, which is basically like the Glenmore plan. That kind of moves out. We've just opened up that particular area so that there's going to be a study. And in fairness, there was a series of about four or five different property owners in there. They came in, they had discussions with us. They said, you know what, we want to look at kind of planning this. The growth of the city happens to be going that way with regards to the airport, the university, employment. So that's very, very exciting. The opening up of Parkinson Recreation Center with all of the other centers in each of. the particular areas and Glenmore has broken ground and obviously foundations and things are being done. But the two that we'll break ground on in the next few weeks is Mission and Rutland. Lions Park, the development that's happening out at Lions Park, the restructuring of that to make it more community active. New management that Crosspara Place will be in, you know, into the future with regards to Oakview coming in and getting their feel on, you know, what type of events and what they want to bring to this community in the future. So yeah, it's like I said, it just kind of pop -up card depends upon which one is actually kind of where we're speaking up, but there's a substantial list of positive, positive things that are happening here. Yeah.


00:40:50 Matt Glen
Yes. And you can see it just driving around. You can see it.


00:40:53 Taylor Atkinson
Well, yeah, I think the optimism surrounding Kelowna is incredible. Like, yeah, there are some obviously hurdles that collectively we have to get through. Homeless, mental health, housing, affordability, but just an incredible place to live. So we appreciate what you've done so far. Obviously there is a municipal election coming up. We'll kind of leave that there for now. We know you likely have an announcement to make in the coming weeks. And although Matt and I, you know. self -declare ourselves as groundbreaking news journalists, whatever we want to say. We're just a couple of guys on a podcast, so we'll leave it with you. But yeah, thank you so much for your time today, Mayor Tom Dias. And yeah, you're welcome back in a time, obviously.


00:41:30 Tom Dyas
There is a lot happening and people get busy with their lives and they're doing what they're doing and they don't get kind of a chance to kind of spend the time to kind of see some of this. So that's why, you know, the podcast is so valuable what you guys are doing. And I truly, truly, truly appreciate the time. So thank you for just helping share that message. Thank you.