An expanding city

I have lived in Westbank for 15 of the past 17 years, and the West Kelowna we see today is not the Westbank when I first moved here. Far from it. 

The city is expanding, in some ways, where the municipal government cant keep up. And that is where I believe we need a proper town hall. 

I would love to see a fantastic building go up that would be a landmark and worth showing off, this is what they have designed and proposed. But the problem is it’s going to cost over 7 million dollars. It’s great that the building will have all of these other amenities, but I honestly think that those additional amenities are excuses to make the extravagant building. 

Do we need another interior health office? Last I checked they were everywhere. 

Now, there are things that the city needs that they haven’t kept up with, mainly sidewalks. As I drove a lot of places, I never really noticed the lack of sidewalks until a popular mobile game came out that encouraged walking to places. Suddenly i realized that Old Okanagan Highway, as well as Shannon Lake Drive, had barely any sidewalks at all. Next to the highway, these are two of the busiest roads in the city, being the main roads for a large number of housing. 

Unless you drive, which not everyone does, its really difficult for someone to walk to even the bus stop, let alone the grocery store. 

Now, there is a common ground in this. 

I would be happy to see a town hall go up, that doesn’t have the extra offices to it that we really don’t need, still look really nice, but maybe only cost three million. A fraction of what they want to spend. The extra money goes into things that we really need, like the sidewalks that this city heavily lacks. 

Jordan Wickett