Tim Down

Kelowna council forum #1 at Revelry

Castanet and Revelry, with ForChange Kelowna · Sept. 16, 2026 · Full video of this forum on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

1. Opening statement

   My platform is built around fiscal responsibility. I'm not saying that a tax increase is bad, nor am I saying a large budget is bad. What I want to do is use business-minded focus to measure and understand what value and services Kelowna citizens are getting for the money they're investing.

2. Opening statement

   Unfortunately at times we can get ahead of ourselves thinking we're still living in times where we can spend without real care or concern. We get what we call gold-plated facilities that are great to drive by and look at.

3. What does leadership mean for you on council?

   So in leadership it takes pragmatism, it takes humility, it takes collaboration.

4. A council decision you disagreed with, and what you would have done differently

   So one of them was photo radar that the province was trying to raise funds with and there was a big backlash to that. I was on council. I said pragmatically that it could be good in certain locations where we had statistics and we could measure that that that would be a beneficial service not as a moneymaker, but as a safety issue.

5. An area of city spending that deserves greater scrutiny

   With the greatest of respect to Mohini, $150 million from the federal government is coming from you. [...] That's the job of the council, to guard your dollars and to make sure that every dollar that we spend goes further than it has [...] If we look at our specifications for some of our road requirements now, it just continues to get gold plated.

6. What would you do differently about crime and safety that hasn't been done before?

   So what can we do differently as a community? Well, let's just accept first and foremost, we're a municipality, there's only certain things that we have control over. [...] We need the police to do the police things that require their authority. We need by-law to go in and deal with the authorities that we give them in the by-laws. We need the healthcare people to go and deal with those psychotic crisis moments that are health related. [...] We're dealing with conduct and behavior that a civil society will no longer accept, and that's what we're here to do.

7. Candidate question: In your first hundred days, how would you tackle traffic and affordable housing?

   To deal with traffic is going to take engineers. [...] I would maybe suggest in hindsight that maybe some of that money should have went to traffic congestion projects instead of. Maybe some gold-plated parks

8. Candidate question: In your first hundred days, how would you tackle traffic and affordable housing?

   We have land that's been overpaid for, it needs to be accounted for. We have land prices that have to come down. [...] What we can control as a city is how we as a city make developers and builders and homeowners that want to build houses easier to come and do that work. [...] a concierge service so anyone can come to our community and they can get their approvals within 15 days

9. Audience question: What policies would make life more affordable for the poorest people in the city?

   We've seen our residential rental rates go high. We're now starting to see them come down. That's part of a softening economic climate and that's also a part of an overbuilding of a certain product type that maybe in hindsight shouldn't have been built

10. Audience question: What policies would make life more affordable for the poorest people in the city?

    What we can control is making sure that as a city we're making it easy for businesses to come to do business here, to employ people. We're making it cost effective by making sure that the services that we're offering are reviewed [...] Can it be done cheaper? Should it be done by the city?