How Council Priorities scored a major event touchdown

This was no Hail Mary. This was a designed play that began with some bold thinking and the determination to get the ball over the line.

The playbook was Council Priorities 2023-26 and the result was Touchdown Kelowna: a celebration of professional three-down football June 26 to July 4, featuring the BC Lions against Alberta rivals Edmonton and Calgary at the Apple Bowl – along with a suite of fan-focused and family-friendly festival events throughout the week, including the always-bustling Canada Day long weekend in Kelowna.

With festival event tickets going on sale April 9 and the recent announcement of more detail about the Canadian Football League’s foray into the Okanagan – the event offers a glittering example of how priorities established by elected officials can manifest into tangible benefits for the residents they serve.

The event will generate national broadcast exposure for Kelowna and deliver an estimated $50 to $60 million in economic impact. Benefits are anticipated in tourism, hospitality, retail, and transportation sectors, including increased hotel occupancy, restaurant traffic, and passenger activity at Kelowna International Airport. 

Provincial funding of $1 million will support expanded seating at the Apple Bowl, and enhance the visitor experience during the 10-day fan festival, with 35,000 fans from across Canada expected to attend the two-game series and festival.

In this example, Council priorities accelerated the existing direction from the Kelowna Event Strategy. It honours the long-term thinking done by the events team and shows how a strong focus on priorities can be powerful in hitting the gas on plans or programs that already exist.

“When Council updated their priorities a couple of years into their term, they added the economy as one of its six focal points,” said Mike McGreer, Corporate Strategy & Performance Manager with the City of Kelowna. “They had identified a bit of a gap in what they wanted to influence. The first year the direction was around more jobs, better diversification and being more resilient,” he said.

With time and reporting back on progress, McGreer says Council was able to get more specific about what actions could be taken to advance the economic priority.

“Eventually, they really homed-in on attracting major events, sporting events and tourism as a way the City can have an influence and contribute to the economy.”

Setting priorities isn’t an aspirational exercise – it’s a process designed to establish measurable results on the actions taken to advance those priorities. McGreer leads the small team charged with monitoring, measuring and shepherding each of Council’s six priorities: crime & safety, affordable housing, homelessness, transportation, agriculture & environment, and local economy.

“I believe strongly in the value of good public institutions and city governments,” said McGreer. “And that they should be well run, and that it should be easy for residents and taxpayers to understand what we do, how well we do it and how much it costs.

“And that comes with being transparent, and for Council to be deliberate about saying ‘what do we want to improve during our time here?’”

Council Priorities for 2023 -2026 provide a clear path from these big focus areas to measurable change. The plan charts 25 specific actions – from advocating for bail reform to improving traffic flow.

“We’ve been reporting on these (since 2023) and how we’re doing and Council has updated the priorities twice,” he said, “So it’s getting in that loop of: be clear about what we want to do, do the work, and see where we’re making a difference, learn from it, adjust accordingly, and repeat.”

This work on advancing priorities is naturally connected to budgeting.

“The big piece of work I’m involved in on the other side of my job is on the service-based budget process.

“After three years, we’ve gotten that to a place where the budget process does a good job of saying: we deliver 20 services, here’s all the measurements of service levels and you can see how much those cost. That sets us up to be very intentional about saying, ‘OK, do we want to increase service in this area, decrease it over here, raise tax or lower tax to make more intentional decisions about how much we want to do and how well can we do it based on what we’re willing to spend.”

Learn more about Touch Down Kelowna here: Touchdown Kelowna set to bring week-long celebration and headline events | City of Kelowna