Tell us a bit about yourself and why you are running in this election.

I have lived in Kelowna with my husband, Jim, for nearly three decades, raising our family, caring for our aging parents, and billeting other children in the same home in addition to building businesses that employ people in this community. I am the CEO of Csek Creative and and NowMedia group our online local news organizations; KelownaNow, and others, and I have served with business, economic-development and community organizations throughout the Central Okanagan.

I am running for council because I love Kelowna, but I believe our city can deliver better results.

People deserve to feel safe in their neighbourhoods, to know their tax dollars are being used responsibly, to see serious action taken to reduce wildfire risk and to create appropriate rental and ownerships for all income levels.

My approach is practical. I ask what people need, what it will cost, what benefit it will produce, and how we will measure the result. I listen carefully, seek out opposing views, and make decisions based on the interests of the whole city. I do not accept “that is how it has always been done” as a reason to avoid necessary change.

Kelowna has given my family a great deal. I am running because I believe it is once again time to give back, bring my business and community experience to City Hall, and help turn the knowledge we already have into action.

If you feel comfortable sharing, what is your faith background, religious tradition, or philosophical worldview, for example: Christian, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish, secular, or another worldview?

I identify as Christian. My children and I were baptized in the United Church, and our family attends Trinity Church, although not every week. We also use Bible study resources as part of our personal faith practice, and our five-year-old granddaughter faithfully uses her God app daily. My faith continues to grow, and I'm encouraged to see renewed interest in Christianity and people returning to faith.

How do your personal values shape your leadership, and what are those values?

The value underneath almost everything I do is service. I believe where you invest your love, you invest your life. I love Kelowna, and I believe that loving a community means accepting responsibility for it, not simply criticizing from the sidelines.

I value honesty, courage, hard work, and keeping my word. I do not subscribe to statements such as “that is not my job,” “it cannot be done,” or “this is how we have always done it.” I believe leaders should listen carefully, ask the uncomfortable questions, and seek out the strongest opposing argument before deciding. Then they need to decide, explain why, and be accountable for the result.

I also believe resources are finite. Whether it is a family’s money, a business’s money, or taxpayers’ money, it represents someone’s work and sacrifice. That is why I return to need, cost, benefit, and result.

My faith shapes my belief in service, compassion, and the dignity of every person. It does not mean avoiding hard decisions. It means trying to make them honestly, treating people with respect, and remembering who the work is meant to serve.

How would you balance your personal beliefs with your responsibility to represent all Kelowna residents?

My personal beliefs shape how I conduct myself, but they do not give me the right to impose those beliefs on someone else. Council represents every Kelowna resident, including people whose faith, values, experiences, and priorities differ from mine.

I would listen carefully, seek out the strongest opposing views, and make decisions based on the facts, the law, the full cost, and the impact on the whole city, both now and over time. I will always treat people with dignity, but respect does not require avoiding difficult decisions or pretending every option produces the same result.

My faith calls me to serve, not to judge. My responsibility as a councilor would be to protect people’s rights, use public resources responsibly, and pursue the best outcome for Kelowna as a whole. I would explain my decisions honestly and remain accountable for them, including to residents who disagree with me.

How would you like to see city spending prioritized?

I would start with the things a city is responsible for getting right: public safety, reliable infrastructure, essential services and protecting people and property from wildfire. These are not optional extras. They are the foundation of a functioning city.

Every spending request should be tested against four questions: What is the need? What is the full cost? What benefit will residents receive? What measurable result should we expect? If a proposal cannot answer those questions, it should not move ahead simply because it has always been funded or sounds worthwhile.

Council and citizens also need clear, usable visibility into departmental budgets and major spending decisions. People should be able to understand where their money is going, what choices were considered and what was given up to fund each priority. Transparency leads to better questions and better decisions.

Families and businesses across Kelowna are right-sizing their expenses as costs rise. The City should be prepared to do the same. That means maintaining what we already own before announcing new projects, reviewing programs that have grown without demonstrating results, and funding citizens’ priorities before institutional wish lists.

Residents work hard for their money. City Hall should take no more than necessary and prove that what it spends is producing value.

What role, if any, do you think City Council should have in setting standards for materials and programming available to minors in city-funded facilities and public libraries?

Children are innocent and must be protected from sexually explicit and other age-inappropriate material in publicly funded facilities. I do not accept that Council can collect taxpayers’ money, fund facilities and appoint representatives, but then claim it has no responsibility for what children can access in those spaces.

I would support clear, enforceable standards for age-appropriate access, including transparent cataloguing, physical separation of explicit material, meaningful parental involvement and a prompt public process for reviewing concerns. Adults could continue to access lawful materials. Protecting children does not require banning books for adults.

Alberta is moving toward this type of approach for public libraries, and I believe British Columbia should do the same. Kelowna Council should use every legal tool available to press the regional library board for safeguards and advocate to the province for clear standards. If current legislation limits municipal authority, that is a reason to seek legislative change, not an excuse to abandon responsibility.

What role do you believe parental consent and notification should play when a minor makes personal disclosures or requests support from a school counsellor, and what exceptions, if any, should apply?

Parents have the primary responsibility and authority for their children. We bring them into the world, raise them, provide for them, and remain accountable for their well-being. A school counsellor should not make significant decisions, arrange ongoing support, or keep material information about a minor from a parent.

A child should always be able to ask an adult for immediate help, but the counsellor’s role should be to support the child and bring the parents into the conversation, not replace them. Schools should not use confidentiality to introduce beliefs, identities, or courses of action that parents are deliberately prevented from knowing about.

This is mainly school-board and provincial policy, not a City of Kelowna power. As a councilor I would still speak for parental responsibility and child safety when residents ask City Hall to weigh in.

The exception is when there are reasonable grounds to believe that parental involvement would expose the child to abuse, neglect, exploitation, or serious physical or psychological harm, or when the child presents an immediate danger to themselves or others. In those circumstances, the counsellor must follow child-protection law and involve the proper authorities. That exception must be based on evidence of harm, not disagreement with a parent’s values or parenting choices.

Unless a child’s safety is genuinely at risk, parents must be informed and involved. The presumption should always be parental authority, not institutional secrecy.

What steps would you like to see taken to increase transparency and accountability at City Hall?

I want one clear place where citizens can see city information on demand. Residents should not have to search through multiple systems, hundreds of pages, and years of meeting records to understand a decision.

For every major decision, that public source should show what problem was being solved, what citizens said they needed, the options considered, the full cost of each option, the recommendation, Council’s vote and the result that was promised. It should then track the actual cost, timeline and outcome so people can see whether the commitment was kept.

Council and staff are guardians of taxpayers’ dollars. Every report should demonstrate how that responsibility was honoured, including what alternatives were considered, what risks were identified, and what other priorities were set aside.

Somewhere along the way, we have lost the plot. The institution has become too difficult for ordinary citizens to see and understand. Citizens’ priorities must return to the centre of council and staff decisions. Transparency is not simply making information technically available. It is making it understandable, searchable, and useful so the public can hold its government accountable.

What public safety issues are you seeing in Kelowna, and how do you believe these issues should be addressed?

Kelowna has a growing confidence problem around public safety. Too many residents, workers, and business owners no longer feel comfortable in places that should belong to everyone. They are dealing with theft, vandalism, open drug use, threatening behaviour, repeat offending, and public spaces that can feel surrendered to disorder.

What we are doing is not working well enough. We need to be willing to try approaches we have not tried before, measure the results, and change course quickly when something fails.

Compassion and accountability must operate together. People who want help should be able to move quickly into treatment, shelter, and appropriate support. We must identify and close the gaps between service providers so people are not simply moved from one agency, emergency room or public space to another.

I would also advocate to the province for lawful, medically supervised involuntary care in circumstances where a person is incapable of protecting themselves or presents a serious risk of harm. Leaving someone in extreme illness or addiction on the street is not compassion.

The city should examine additional public-safety options, including appropriately authorized peace officers and carefully defined uses of private security. These resources cannot replace police, but they may strengthen visible presence, protect facilities, document incidents, and allow police and bylaw officers to focus on duties that require their legal authority.

Council must strengthen the tools it controls, demand coordination, and press the province to repair the justice, treatment, and mental-health systems it controls. The measure of success is not another strategy or study. It is whether residents are safer and feel safer.

What do you think can be done locally to bring down the cost of housing?

Kelowna needs to reverse engineer its housing plan. Start with residents’ incomes, household sizes and stages of life. Map the rental and ownership options available at each income level, identify what is missing, and then work backwards to determine what must be built, where it can go and what is preventing it from being delivered.

That plan must include a genuine range of housing. Apartments, townhomes, secondary suites, attainable ownership, family-sized rentals, seniors’ housing and supportive housing all have a role. So do single-family homes. When new communities such as Kettle Valley stop adding a housing type that families still want, the demand does not disappear. It is redirected toward a limited existing supply, making those homes less attainable.

We should not force every household into the same housing solution. The goal should be enough choice for young people, families, seniors and people needing support to find a home that fits both their needs and their income.

The City must also examine everything it adds to the cost of a home, including approval delays, uncertainty, development cost charges, permit fees and unnecessary requirements. Incentives should be tied to filling demonstrated local gaps, and partnerships with builders, non-profits and BC Housing should be based on the homes Kelowna actually needs.

We have heard the same affordability concern election after election. It is time to stop beginning with predetermined answers and work backwards from the outcome: Kelowna residents being able to find and afford the kind of home they need.

What policies would you support to help stimulate Kelowna’s job market?

Kelowna’s job strategy must reflect the economy we actually have. Nearly three-quarters of Central Okanagan businesses have no payroll employees. Many are people who have created work for themselves and may eventually create work for others. Helping even a portion of them make their first hire could have an enormous local impact.

We need to remove unnecessary burdens that delay or prevent businesses from opening and growing. An entrepreneur should have one clear place to learn what permits, licences and inspections are required, what they will cost and how long approval will take. The City should review every step, eliminate duplication, publish service timelines and assign someone to help applicants solve problems rather than sending them from department to department.

We should make it easier to operate appropriate home-based and small businesses, protect affordable commercial and industrial space, and examine whether City fees and rules are creating barriers without delivering a clear public benefit. City procurement should also be accessible to qualified small local businesses, not structured so only large organizations can compete.

The job market will continue to change through technology, automation, and new ways of working. Kelowna should help workers and business owners adapt by connecting employers, educators and training providers to the skills that are actually needed.

Economic development is not another conference or strategy document. It is someone opening the doors of a business, making the first sale, hiring the first employee, and choosing to keep growing in Kelowna.

What ideas do you have to better balance infrastructure and city growth?

Growth and infrastructure must be planned together. We should not approve development without understanding whether roads, water, sewer, fire protection, parks, and other essential services can support it, but we also cannot allow infrastructure delays and uncertainty to make housing unnecessarily expensive.

I would begin with a clear, public map of existing capacity, known deficiencies, planned projects, costs, and timelines. Council, builders, and residents should be able to see where growth can be accommodated now, where infrastructure must come first, and who is expected to pay for it.

Development should be sequenced so new neighbourhoods and density are not added years before the services they require. At the same time, approvals and infrastructure construction need to be coordinated so builders are not waiting indefinitely for decisions from different City departments.

Growth should contribute fairly to the infrastructure it requires, but development charges are ultimately reflected in home prices and rents. Every charge should therefore be transparent, connected to a specific need and reviewed for its effect on affordability. Existing taxpayers should not carry the entire cost of growth, and new residents should not be charged for unrelated legacy problems.

I would also prioritize maintaining and using existing infrastructure before committing to expensive expansion. Every major project should include its full lifetime cost, not just the construction announcement.

The goal is not growth at any cost or stopping growth altogether. It is deliberate growth, built in the right places, at a pace the city can service, with costs and trade-offs clearly understood before Council says yes.