Submitted questionnaire

Trevor Joseph McAleese

Owner, Drixxel Soft (video game development & contract video game development services)

This is the candidate’s public questionnaire. It is not a ForChange recommendation. The committee’s recommended candidates are published on the Candidates page.

1. 01 · Why are you running for Kelowna City Council?

   I’m a lifelong resident of this place. Kelowna has grown and changed in a multitude of ways since my family moved to the Okanagan in 1990, and I recognize the serious challenges facing Kelowna today and into the future: economically, ecologically, infrastructurally.

   This demands equally serious people on Kelowna City Council. People who arrive well-versed in what makes this city tick, people genuinely connected to the economic realities of life on the ground, people who prioritize the interests of the everyday folks who keep this city running.

   There is no local issue that we cannot see improvements made on. With the kind of forward-thinking leadership that I would be honoured to help provide, we can build resilience in the face of wildfires and drought. We can make our streets safer for everyone. We can ensure that traffic and transportation aren't such a headache. We can deliver housing that everyday people can afford to rent & buy. We can attract the kind of investment that creates amazing careers in exciting industries so that more of our young people can build their lives here, just as I have been fortunate to.

   The future is challenging, but it is bright.

2. 02 · Issue #1: the issue, the specific actions you would take, and how City Council can actually influence the outcome.

   Community safety, an umbrella describing visible homelessness, open drug use, crime, disorder. This family of concerns is number one at the door, but most profoundly in Downtown, Rutland, and the North End where residents & businesses feel the greatest share of direct negative impacts.

   Within our municipal authority today, we can start by ensuring a better quality of first response in the event of an incident. We know that the majority of calls coming in to the RCMP relate to non-criminal, lower urgency matters, and this spreads our already strained police resources even thinner when residents are victims of crime and require attention. By resourcing up responders such as DKA On-Call and CRCL, we can delegate a greater number of non-criminal calls away from the RCMP so that our police are better able to provide residents & businesses with timely response to criminal emergencies.

3. 03 · Issue #2: the issue, the specific actions you would take, and how City Council can actually influence the outcome.

   Infrastructure, specifically transportation. Residents are frustrated with worsening vehicle traffic throughout the city, and the unpredictable bottleneck that is the bridge remains a sore spot for so many commuters. I support transportation remaining a top council priority so that transportation-focused capital projects, such as the ongoing Adaptive Signal Project roll-out at major intersections to better synchronize traffic lights, are sufficiently expedited.

   Council can be a powerful advocate in obtaining provincial funding commitments to build the proposed expanded transit yard. Until then, we are capped in the size of our bus fleet, and thus unable to achieve greater frequency & dependability of Kelowna Regional Transit service. Better transit benefits all road users by relieving traffic, and it can provide a far more affordable means for residents to get to where they need to go.

4. 04 · Issue #3: the issue, the specific actions you would take, and how City Council can actually influence the outcome.

   Cost of living, and primarily housing affordability. Kelowna has been very effective at incentivizing a great deal of residential development in recent years, to the point that we arguably now have an oversupply of certain rental housing of which there is not immediate demand for, and especially not at the asking rent.

   There is unmet demand for deeply affordable, family suitable, and fully accessible housing. By the city’s admission, the Revitalization Tax Exemption has not been an effective tool at spurring construction of nonmarket housing in numbers significant enough to make a dent.

   I would like council to debate an approach such as Inclusionary Zoning, where incentives are offered such as accelerated approvals or tax deferments or other compliance motivators, to set minimums in new for-profit builds over a certain size and ensure the most critically needed housing criteria is met.

5. 05 · What experience, skills, and community involvement do you bring to the role?

   I’ve worked hands-on in many key Kelowna industries, from agriculture to hospitality to education and on. Whether immersed in fruit or up to my elbows in dishwater or offering a crash course to a group of school age kids in how to make their first video game, I know what it means to work for a living.

   I hold a co-conferred degree in Business Admin from Okanagan College & UBCO, and that education led to an opportunity to work for the BC Ministry of Finance where I developed and supported a tool deployed to municipalities across the Interior for smarter, more efficient management of business licenses. This involved close coordination with local governments, and I delivered the project well under-budget.

   I have worked in video game development since 2010, and have had my hand in dozens of commercial releases. This is an industry that requires a person to operate under intense pressure and find efficiencies wherever possible, qualities that would serve a Councillor well.

   I care about this place. I take part in community clean-ups at every opportunity, I'm an active member of Kelowna Tree Protectors, and I sit as a Director-at-Large of the Friends of Knox Mountain Park Society.

6. 06 · How will you approach council decisions when priorities compete for limited resources?

   The reality is that local governments cannot run a deficit like higher levels of government, and this means that not every community need can be met in every year’s budget. It is important, then, to determine what is most critically needed and where the smart money should go.

   We’ve seen a notable amount of public backlash to the City of Kelowna signature sign newly added to Stuart Park. This stands out starkly as an example where a significant portion of the general public view a budget priority as a frivolous vanity project, when something such as affordable housing, an area that stands to benefit long-term residents in real and material ways, sees far less in the way of city-championed deliverables.

   A city can do multiple things at once, but we absolutely must deliver for residents in ways that they feel value for money. To not just see, but feel city spending in positive ways through improved neighbourhood infrastructure, public amenities, arts & cultural investment. I have heard from residents across this city the sense of inequity in attention paid neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood, and we need to do a better job of spreading resources around so all neighbourhoods feel valued.

7. 07 · How do you work with people who see an issue differently than you?

   I believe it’s possible to find some measure of common ground with a colleague in just about any disagreement on an issue. By listening intently and approaching their opposing viewpoint non-judgmentally, genuinely making the effort to understand the root values that may be informing their position, and digging into the process of how they arrived there, a contrary perspective can be deconstructed, better understood, and possibly even agreed with at the core of it.

   Fundamentally, I believe that all of us tend to want the same things for our community deep down, even if we’ve diagnosed an issue differently and wish to pursue radically different policies and/or actions in addressing it. Finding the areas where there is agreement, and a willingness to enter into debate & negotiation in good faith with the understanding that no party is going to get 100% of what they want, is what makes practical compromises possible.

   At the end of it, will the community benefit? Have the interests of and impacts on all residents been fully considered? If all parties can agree on that, we've resolved the worst of our differences and not allowed individual personalities to outweigh the public good.

8. 08 · What else should voters know about you?

   I play fingerstyle guitar, and love to write & perform music.

   Cooking is one of my absolute joys, and I especially enjoy putting together packages of Christmas baking, typically to be delivered on Christmas Eve to my favourite people.

   I am a long-term renter, a stubbornly committed transit user, and a dedicated backyard composter.

   I adore animals, I revere nature, and I believe that a better, more equitable, and truly sustainable world is possible.

   I believe that the only effective way to lead is by example.

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