Councillor Tier List

My tierlist for the 2026 Kelowna counciller election.

I spent about 7 hours going through the list of candidates looking at all their platforms and briefly at their backgrounds. They all probably deserve more time looking into but there’s 37 candidates. Do not treat this as some kind of be-all end all tier list, it’s just a collection of my findings that you may or may not find useful. The order within each tier is just the order I came across them.

I’m mainly looking at their platforms since that shows where their values are, and some issues don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. For example, you can’t have affordable housing without lowering housing costs, which results in homeowners losing some potential money if they were wanting to sell, and some wealthy homeowners will be very vocal about this. Also some think that traffic can be fixed by demolishing businesses and residences to expand roads (“just one more lane!”) but cars don’t scale, and thus we need better public transportation for traffic to ever improve.

Though backgrounds are also important for knowing where they’re experienced and if they have any conflicts of interest.

If you have something you wanted to add about a particular candidate (particularly their values), feel free to do so! I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about my placements (other than those BRACE populist arsehats, their platforms are AI abominations) and I absolutely could’ve missed some things. Just feel free to DM me or leave a comment on whatever platform you found this list.

My values for a candidate are:

• Reducing car dependency (via public transportation, better zoning, etc.)
• Housing affordability
• Transparency and honesty

Also is ranking a bunch of people with complex beliefs systems incredibly reductive? Yes. But with most media outlets and platforms being owned by conservative media conglomerates or anger-maximizing engagement social media algorithms (and more importantly the fact that there’s 37 candidates), meh.

Terminology

• “More betterer”: Their platform can be summed up as “Kelowna has xyz problems and I’m committed to fix it!” but without any ideas on how they’re going to fix it.

S

• Davis Kyle
  • Procurement analyst. Has a very comprehensive platform with many good ideas even though I don’t agree with all of them entirely. Seems to have a greater understanding of the city’s problems, not just its symptoms
• Gord Lovegrove
  • Engineer, professor. Platform seems very comprehensive with a bunch of big good ideas: SMARTer housing seems neat; the Community U-Pass, tram-train, and other public transportation things seem like ideas that could actually help instead of just ‘expand roads’; and some actual ideas to help improve the environment
• Trevor McAleese
  • Independent videogame developer, instructor. Platform is pretty good and has a handful of ideas for increasing affordability, reducing car depedence, and increase transparency(a site that tracks counciler votes)
• Brady Rogers
  • Engineer, has business where he makes products from waste. Campaign feels honest which I like. Platform has a few good ideas but could be more. I do really value this level of honesty though

A

• Tim Down
  • Realtor (yuck!), but has a pretty good platform with some decent ideas. Bonus points for not using an LLM

B

• Chris Bocskei
  • Small painter business owner, platform is vague mostly “more betterer” but has a few ideas
• Todd Daniels
  • Owner of Gallery Streetwear, platform is “more better”
• Maxine Dehart
  • Previous councillor, seemingly innocent Columnist for Kelowna Capital News (she looks to be sharing about like new businesses n things rather than gossip), Director of sales/marketing for hotel. Unclear what her values are but knowing lots of businesses is valuable
• Indy Dhial
  • Daycare owner and has titles with childcare people. Platform is just “more betterer”
• Crystal Dougan
  • Owner of a sandwich shop, platform is small and just “more betterer”
• Julia Fraser
  • Big Chair roles for the School board, platform is “more betterer”
• Randy Millis
  • Documents accessibility in kelowna, platform is “more betterer” but with more emphasis on accessibility
• Brain James Pinter
  • Mortgage broker. Platform has some ideas but for Affordability he only focuses on taxes and claims taxes is “most people’s greatest living expense” which isn’t true unless you’re rich. If you’re poor (the people most affected by Affordability), you pay frickall in taxes.
• Todd Robert Sanderson
  • Accountant. Has a few small ideas but platform is mostly just “more betterer” with balanced everything

C

• Les Bellamy
  • Home designer business owner, platform is vague “more betterer”
• Kevin Kraft
  • Buncha titles, teacher, manager, chair. Site is “more betterer” but with more emphasis on smaller family homes instead of apartments
• Humberto Morales
  • Business guy, site is “more betterer”
• Mohini Singh
  • Encumbent counciller. Platform is “more betterer” but very brief.
• Laura Thurnheer
  • HR company owner, manager, and instructor at OC. Platform is very short “more betterer”
• Rick Webber
  • Incumbent counciller, former radio reporter. Doesn’t really have a platform, but from what I could find, he hasn’t done much bad as counciller

D

• Nikki Renee Csek
  • Marketing agency business owner, whole website is very much “more betterer” but with big bold words, comes off as disingenuous but that’s what you’d expect from a marketing agency owner
• Daniel Fritter
  • Owns a site where he talks about guns (doesn’t seem too radical, at least), platform is vague “more betterer”
• Bal Grewal
  • Real estate lawyer, mostly “more betterer” with a few ideas but doesn’t mention affordability
• Teresa May
  • Some business lady, platform is “more betterer” but with a lot of fluff that comes off as disingenuous
• Mike Rose
  • Musician. Has a few ideas but doesn’t seem that well informed. For transport he only mentions expanding roads and a second bridge instead of anything to reduce the car dependency.
• Lee-Ann Tiede
  • Manager lady, holds some chair roles and school trustee. Platform is very brief and “more betterer”, but basically no mention of affordability, housing, or transportation

F

• Susan Ames
  • Environmental Consultant w/ PhD in Resource Management, platform is clear and is pro-public transportation over roads, but is huge pro-NIMBY, golf courses (claiming they have environmental benfits?), wants Development Cost Charges to benefit smaller homes with lawns, wants Architectural and Heritage Advisory Committees to make sure “new construction should fit into existing neighborhoods” (more red tape! This will drive up cost of construction!), and is against building more rental buildings
• Doris Maria Bregolisse
  • Realtor (yuck!), against rental housing because “secondary suite owners will be forced to abandon home ownership if they can’t find renters” (because lowering rent isn’t a thing apparently) and meanwhile has no mention of cost of cost of living crisis
• Greg Dahms
  • Realtor (yuck!), platform is just vague “more betterer”
• King James III
  • Joke candidate
• Hamid Khajavi
  • Realtor (yuck!), platform is just “more betterer” but notably wants to add a 2nd bridge, overpasses, and exit lanes to hw97 (this will demolish businesses and housing btw and not even improve traffic)
• JC Rathwell
  • AI business blah blah. Pro Air-BnB. Randomly mentions “Plandemic” and criticisms of covid policy as if that’s somehow relevant. Platform uses a lot of dishonest exaggrative language. Also claims that he’s actually providing solutions but the doesn’t actually explain how they will help or it’s just vague “more betterer”, mostly due to his extremely heavy use of AI. Get this populist nuthead outta here
• Brian Rogers
  • Electrician, owns a private jet. Really hard to find anything about this guy’s platform other than he’s pissed at council because they can decide whether or not to hear you out https://votemate.org/bc2026/candidates/14517
• Corey Severin
  • Sea-doo rental guy. Platform is just “more betterer” except with extra overconfidence and dishonest language, partially due to the heavy use of AI. Seems like another populist nobody. Also apparently in a coalition with JC Rathwell, Rob Wilkinson, and Humberto Morales
• Glendon Charles Smedley
  • Occupation: no clue. Only seems to have a media precedence on twitter (red flag) which isn’t viewable without an account. I only briefly saw something about communism, but if I had to guess he’s probably far right
• Silverado Brooks Socrates
  • Former horse trail ride owner. Website is down and doesn’t seem to have a platform anywhere for 2026. She probably doesn’t deserve to be down here but I have no platform to judge
• Robert Wilkinson
  • Ex-nurse, artist, real-estate investor (red flag!). Yet another site with extremely overconfident and dishonest “more betterer” that’s all AI. I hate these BRACE populist arseholes, their websites and campaign approaches are genuinely harmful to honest debate and the democratic process. This kind of dishonestly should be illegal (in principle - not sure if such a law is feasible in practice))

Observations

• Most candidates usually follow the formula of: “Kelowna has XYZ problems, we need to do [vague, high-level goal]” but very few actually have specific ideas on how these goals will be accomplished.
  • For example, most platforms mention that we should “cut red tape” for fixing housing affordability, but none of them mention specific policies that should be changed. And then in the same breath they sometimes mention “we need to make sure the infrastructure supports the new building and make sure it fits in with existing neighborhoods” i.e. more red tape (though note that I’m not necessarily against these ideas in principal, it’s just kinda contradictory)
• A vast majority of candidates utilized AI in some regard. In campaign posters, platforms, about pages, and more. Some used it more than others. Like some probably wrote their platform beforehand and then just used AI to build the website after the fact. Others used AI heavily in the constructing of their whole platform (see BRACE candidates), and you can usually tell by how overconfident the platform is (while also lacking specifics).