Dissatisfaction with amount of growth rising in W. Kelowna

West Kelowna is still a relatively new municipality, but many of its residents think it is growing too fast.

The 2017 citizen survey revealed 45 per cent of respondents think West Kelowna is growing too fast, up from 27 per cent in 2016.

Forty-nine per cent of people said they thought West Kelowna was growing at the right pace, down from 66 per cent in 2016.

Complaints of growth come along with concerns about traffic and roads, said Mayor Doug Findlater.

“Traffic is always the issue,” he said. “Growth puts strains on things like roads and sidewalks. On the other hand, that’s how we finance it is through growth. How are you going to pay for the upgrades people want if you don’t grow your tax base?”

According to the survey, 51 per cent of people prefer keeping taxes the same with the same or less level of service, down from 59 per cent in 2016.

“It’s a dilemma,” said Findlater. “We’ll have to educate the public about how we finance our infrastructure projects.”

Survey respondents ranked water infrastructure, roads and sidewalks as the top three places they would like core infrastructure capital funding to be spent.

“This municipality is not yet 10 years old, and we have a massive infrastructure deficit that we inherited in 2007 that we have to find the money for without taxing people out of their houses,” said Findlater. “What I can promise people is that in three years, water probably won’t be an issue, because we received the $41 million and found the funding to build a water treatment plant.”

The top three issues facing city council according to survey respondents are: roads, bike lanes and sidewalks.

“We’re going to continue to do what we’re doing with road upgrades,” said Findlater. “Gellatly has been upgraded along the waterfront to a great standard, there have been upgrades to the roads in downtown Westbank, we’ve upgraded Boucherie Road, (which) will continue next year by Volcanic Hills.”

The city is also working to upgrade its bike lanes to an urban standard and is actively building more sidewalks, said Findlater.

“We have sidewalk program of $600,000 a year. That’s a lot of money,” he said. “Our priority for sidewalks has been in school zones. We can’t do it all at once, but we are doing it.”