2025 Presidents' Message

The Board of your residents’ association worked quite hard this year to consolidate the learnings that came out of the first year of the City of Kelowna’s Neighbourhood Association Affiliation Pilot Program (NAAPP) to determine what the focus would be in the future.

The NAAPP came into effect half way through the 2023/2024 fiscal year and as such, the learnings were fast and furious. 

We learned that in many respects, the Quail Ridge Residents’ Association is a very mature association with practices that have evolved over its 24-year history such that we have probably one of the largest, most integrated associations in the City.  As well, the association has very efficient “back office” and regulatory practices that compare very favourably against other associations.  Our FireSmart program is well respected by the City of Kelowna’s Fire Department and the University of British Columbia (UBCO).  Indeed, one of the reasons that UBCO decided to become the first recognized FireSmart University in Canada because it was so impressed with our program.

This makes our jobs, as directors on the board, a lot easier because we are building and consolidating on fantastic ideas from previous boards and volunteers.

2024/25 also witnessed further consolidation since the pandemic.  So many of our programs lapsed during the pandemic and a lot of people moved away as well as moved into the community.  We are proud that:

• The annual garage sale was a fantastic success, with all the brochures handed out to buyers from outside the community GONE by 9:00 AM!

• The FireSmart Summer Challenge has brought in twice as many participants as it did in 2024 and the five-year review of the evacuation plan for the community has just been signed off by the Fire Department.

• QRRA continues to work with UBCO and the Okanagan Golf Course to discuss FireSmart initiatives, including our evacuation plan and the controlled burn that the City of Kelowna will be conducting this Fall.  As well, the fire / weather sensors that Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais and his team have been developing are set to be installed this Fall. (This was the system that we told you about last year that UBCO is providing us for free).

Going forward, we decided to run the Community Wish List survey to help us determine what the association’s focus should be.  We are finally at the point where we can take on new projects and while we spent a great deal of time investigating a variety of ideas such as community bulletin boards, additions to parks amenities etc, in the end, we decided that we really should ask you, our members, what you want us to focus on.  We cannot guarantee that everything that was included on the survey is actionable, but we will investigate to determine feasibility.

To close, I hope that 2025/26 is productive, that our FireSmart community remains safe and that some of the community projects from the survey completed!

Thank you!

Laura Peacock

President