Kimberley City Council Report

By Nowell Berg

On October 27, of City Kimberley held its regular bi-monthly meeting.

Councillors Sue Cairns, Kevin Dunnebacke, Diana Fox, Woody Maguire, Jason McBain were present along with Mayor Don McCormick. Coun. Sandra Roberts was absent.

An archive of the meeting can be viewed on the City of Kimberley YouTube channel. Watch it here.

Proposed OCP and Zoning Bylaws Aligned with Housing Needs Report

Council received from staff a request to begin consideration of amendments that would align the OCP and Zoning Bylaws with the Housing Needs study.

The Housing Needs Report (HNR), received and approved by Council in December 2024, identified housing requirements for five (2026), 10 (2031) and 20 years (2041). To meet these goals, as set out by the provincial government, city staff propose changes to the OCP and Zoning Bylaws to make that happen. The HNR also outlines the need to low-income and social housing needs within the city that also require changes to the OCP and Zoning Bylaws.

According to the HNR, Kimberley will need 544 new housing units by the end of 2026, of which 370 have or are under construction. By the end of 2031, the HNR estimates the city will need 952 new dwellings.

Discussion around the council chamber focused on low-income/social housing and group homes.

Speaking about low income families and workers in need of adequate housing, Coun. Cairns said, “People have been pushed out of our community for years” due to a lack of affordable housing. She “strongly support these changes” to increase the amount of low-income housing within the city.

She also raised the need for the city to look at “collecting” fees from developers to “compensate” for public services and infrastructure expansion costs, which the city does not currently do.

She said it is “critical” the city look at this issue because the Federal government has a program to compensate municipalities for the difference between what the city collects and what it costs the city to expand infrastructure. The city would need to collect these fees to access the program.

Coun. Dunnebacke posed the question, “Where are the jobs coming for these people to need the housing.” He added, “I don’t see where another 1,100 jobs are coming from.”

Troy Pollack, Manager Planning and Sustainability, replied that the HNR did the housing calculations “based on the methodology set out by the province.” He said, “The HNR doesn’t touch on where those people will be working.”

Mayor McCormick raised two concerns. The first, “I don’t want to see council taken out of the decision-making process which will happen” with the social housing and group home proposed zoning changes.

The city has already “identified city land for social housing without much difficulty at all.” He added the city should be able to “manage our way through that [addressing social housing needs] without a policy change that is going to guess where we may or may not be in the future.” He urged caution in making policy changes that would “encumber” future council’s that may be dealing with “something completely different than what we are dealing with today.” Summing up he said, “Crystal balls are just not that clear.”

Coun. Fox told council that it’s “really hard to get a group home built.” She noted that group homes would probably not be built in Kimberley because funders of such facilities will have a “whole bunch of parameters in place that have nothing to do with a zoning bylaw.” She went on to say that group homes require certain levels of transit and services that “we just don’t have.” The proposed zoning policy change “removes a very small barrier.”

Coun. McBain, while in support of the proposed changes, agreed with the Mayor on the need to have “flexibility when it comes to group homes.”

Kimberley City Council assembles twice monthly starting at 7 p.m.

The next regular Council meeting: November 10.

e-KNOW file photo

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