Good morning, everyone, and thank you for inviting me to be here today.
The Uptown Rutland Business Association, or URBA, is a business improvement association that was established in 2007. It is located a 15-minute drive from the downtown core of Kelowna, British Columbia. It is an area defined and mandated under municipal legislation.
Rutland can be described as Kelowna's oldest, most established neighbourhood, with approximately 30,000 residents. Its business membership consists of 230 businesses and commercial building owners. These business owners can be described as hard-working, diverse, approachable and authentic. Our membership breakdown consists of about 25% retail businesses, with an almost equal breakdown among restaurants, professional services and services such as car repair.
Our vision statement is “Rutland Proud: to attract and expand development, business and prosperity with pride and purpose.” Our mission statement is “Uptown, Down to Earth: To grow and strengthen Rutland's hard-working business community through authentic connections and strategic opportunities.”
We are accomplishing our promotion goals by broadening our reach and sharing our stories. We are accomplishing our advocacy goals by building a cohesive vision through open dialogue with our members, and eventually plan to expand our BIA. We are building capacity by increasing our visibility and supporting our local businesses. We are increasing our connections by increasing our community contacts and shifting our approach with local and provincial governments to develop solutions.
By advocating for a vision of Rutland, URBA wants to engage members, developers and entrepreneurs. We conduct surveys and interviews to determine what types of support and resources our members want and need. URBA will continue to cultivate meaningful relationships to motivate dialogue. We see a shift in approach with municipal and provincial ministries from merely asking for answers toward actively working together to develop solutions and communicating a clear understanding of the possibilities and limitations to membership. This way URBA can advocate for the possible.
URBA will continue to promote business to customers, investors and entrepreneurs. We want to celebrate and encourage the multiculturalism and diversity of Rutland by identifying opportunities to support multiculturalism and related key stakeholder events and sponsorships. URBA is working on identifying what types of businesses and missing amenities Rutland needs and then developing a plan to attract them. We want to continue to work with the city and the Ministry of Transportation to identify what URBA can and cannot do in terms of beautification. We want Rutland to be a visible, unique and attractive place to invest.
Our proudest accomplishment is our award-winning uptown mural project, consisting of 22 large-scale murals located on the walls of commercial buildings within Rutland. Each mural has been painted by a different artist coming from the Okanagan, throughout B.C., and as far away as Montreal and Toronto. The objectives of the uptown mural project consist of strengthening community engagement and involvement, boosting the local economy, reducing crime, beautifying the community, and educating and inspiring youth through the creation of public art.
URBA sees Rutland as a community where businesses flourish and are sustainable in more difficult economic times. We also see Rutland as a healthy community and want to be engaged with the city and key community stakeholders in the vision and planning for Rutland's future, as well as identifying infrastructure and transportation, especially when it comes to the flow of goods and people through Rutland.
We are acutely aware of the community's safety and security challenges, which many B.C. communities are currently facing. We are advocating for all levels of government to take action immediately and begin to work collaboratively on how best to tackle issues such as complex care, prolific offenders and attainable housing. We all know there are no easy answers.
As a small organization, URBA has utilized the Canada summer jobs program for many years. It's an important part of how we are able to work on new and ongoing community initiatives each summer. I share similar challenges and issues that my fellow witnesses have already mentioned, so I won't go into those.
In conclusion, I thank you for this opportunity to participate in this process.