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Residents of Apex Mountain are organizing to improve the community.
Year-round residents at the ski hill outside Penticton have formed the Apex Community Association, a charitable non-profit dedicated to creating positive change for residents.
It’s the first group of its kind for Apex, says association president Caroline Lachapelle.
“We needed a voice for the community,” she said, explaining the group will make it easier to obtain grants and funding for any sort of initiatives residents come up with. The group will also represent residents in dealings with the resort corporation and Penticton Indian Band.
Lachapelle says they will have a different mandate than the Apex Property Owners Association (APOA), which was formed in 1995, representing homeowners in more of an activist role on issues such as encroachment of natural resource industries.
“They are absolutely amazing, but they are not ‘hey we want to build a park,’” Lachapelle said.
The APOA, which supports the new group, is set up in a way that makes it difficult to secure funding from the government. It will decide this winter if it will continue to work alongside the new community association or dissolve and have its members join forces with the new charitable group.
“It’s really nice to see so many new people coming to the mountain and people who have lived here for their entire lives come together to reigniting that spark,” Lachapelle said. “That thing that made Apex such a fantastic special gem in the South Okanagan, as a community.”
She said residents have voiced a desire for new amenities like parks, a paintball field or even a curling rink. The association will allow for the creation of various subcommittees to push individual ideas forward under one banner.
The first big change will see the Apex Mountain Fire Brigade, which was recently donated its first truck, join the community association to obtain charitable status.
Lachapelle credited local RDOS director Subrina Monteith with pushing the community to form an association. About 120 residents live at Apex year round.
The community association’s first AGM will be announced in the coming weeks. Those that want to get involved can contact [email protected].
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