From Resilience to Momentum

Setting the Stage for an Inclusive, Prosperous and Sustainable Future

On Friday, June 10, City of Kelowna released the 2021 Annual Report detailing the City’s financial activities, major projects, opportunities, challenges and achievements for the prior fiscal year. It’s an important document that helps keeps our residents informed on the work we do, together with our citizens and many community partners, to ensure Kelowna remains a great place to live and do business.

While 2020 demonstrated our community’s resilience, 2021 was a story of response and, despite a global economic downturn, substantial progress.

Alongside the completion of pivotal strategies and the realization of record-setting milestones, key economic indicators are showing Kelowna is heading into 2022 with momentum—and living up to its promise of becoming a City of the Future.

Between 2016 and 2021, our city’s population increased 13.5 per cent, making it the fastest growing city in B.C. while having the third-fastest growing downtown in Canada (behind Montreal and Halifax). For the first time, building permit values exceeded $1 billion and Kelowna International Airport (YLW), one of the largest economic drivers in the Southern Interior, continued to be one of the top 10 busiest airports in the country, and was one of the fastest recovering airports in Canada.

Though restrictions and the biggest wave of the pandemic yet continued to touch many aspects of our lives, 2021 offered an opportunity to innovate, optimize and streamline, revealing new—better and more efficient—ways of doing things. New economic opportunities were generated through a focused approach to community partnerships, and key foundational plans to shape our city’s growth and respond to complex social and community safety issues were pushed over the finish line.

Of the many projects and initiatives completed in 2021, arguably none could be more important than the 2040 Official Community Plan (OCP) and 2040 Transportation Master Plan (TMP).

The OCP sets a strategic course for the next 20 years as to how our city should grow, prioritizing areas, decisions and policies that our citizens have told us they want to focus on through Imagine Kelowna and OCP engagement opportunities. The 2040 TMP sets the direction for a vibrant city where people and places are conveniently connected by diverse transportation options. Working together, the two plans will help achieve the vibrant, sustainable and inclusive future residents envisioned through the creation of our city’s Imagine Kelowna community vision.

Throughout the year, staff also worked diligently to advance City of Kelowna’s Action Plan 2021, which identifies the organization’s most notable strategic and operational work for the year. This included developing Kelowna’s first Community Safety Plan, a comprehensive, systems-based, five-year action plan to generate shared ownership, vision and action among government ministries and community organizations that contribute to community safety.

As these and many more projects throughout 2021 taught us, flexibility, adaptability, innovation and a shared vision are the cornerstones of a vibrant, resilient city. It is through this that we generate valuable new ideas and approaches to support our community’s vision and turn progress into the results that create the Kelowna we want to live in and leave for the next generation.

To learn more, visit kelowna.ca/annualreport.