Kelowna chasing $50M

Kelowna’s effort to end homelessness might be worth $50 million to municipal coffers.

City officials suggest council should consider putting forward the so-called Journey Home strategy as Kelowna’s entry in the federal government’s Smart Cities Challenge.

Two other ideas for submission are the city’s water management strategies, and the ways in which it manages growth and development.

Council is being asked today to allocate $25,000 for work to identify which proposal is best suited to the criteria of the Smart Cities Challenge.

The Liberal government created the awards program last year as a way of encouraging municipalities to come up with new ideas to improve the lives of residents through innovation, data, and connected technology.

“Across the country, communities large and small are bursting with new ideas,” federal minister of infrastructure Amarjeet Sohi writes on the government's website.

“The Smart Cities challenge will ask (municipal) leaders to team up with pioneering business, academia, and civic organizations to design innovative solutions to their most pressing challenges,” Sohi says. The top prize is a mind-boggling $50 million. Two other prizes, of up to $10 million, are also available to cities of less than 500,000 people.

Application deadline is April 24. Cities chosen as finalists will be given $250,000 to advance their proposals, with the overall winners announced next spring.