Improving Kelowna's community consultation.

At the doorstep, many people tell me that they don't feel heard, or that they don't really know what city council is up to. We can't rely on local media to deliver all the news that is important. We should focus on Plain-Language Public Engagement. Public engagement, surveys, and consultation must seek real input from residents, including giving them the option to disagree, rather than forcing them to rank pre-determined options full of policy jargon.
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I support:

• Electronic vote tabulating for council meetings with automated publication on the City of Kelowna website: council votes by councillor can be searched and filtered by the public. This can be found in all large cities like Vancouver and Toronto.
• Lobbying the BC Government to allow ranked ballots, eliminating the concern of vote-splitting while ensuring the mayor always has the support of more than 50% of voters.
• Directing staff to ensure that all future City of Kelowna data collection, OCP surveys, and community feedback is statistically significant.
• Open By Default or "raw data first" transparency standard for public meeting minutes, budgets, and planning tools.
• Reducing reliance on closed-door working groups. 
• Emulating BC's political contribution tax credit system on a local level.

​The end result would be a more responsive and representative council.
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