Regional District Growth Management

The North Okanagan Regional District may be looking at creating a regional-rural economic officer position.

Chair of the RDNO’s Regional Growth Management Committee Mike MacNabb says they’ve looked at this before .

Now it’s a matter of fleshing it out.

” It hs to be defensible. It also has to be providing some results for us. We’d be looking at maybe a three year commitment and then we would review.”

A workshop will be held in the fall to work out the terms of reference.

The committee has gone over a State of the Basin report covering the North Okanagan down to the Similkameen

” By and large, I think we’re doing very well. We looked at water. We looked at housing. We looked at obviously the employment. We looked at other indicators.”

Mike MacNabb says unemployment in the North Okanagan stuck out.

” If employment is the issue, then we have to sit down and try to figure out how can we make this place more desirable for people to come, set up business and create some jobs.”

He also wondered if a high number given to unemployment has anything to do with the number of retired people living here.

MacNabb says most of the information only went to 2011 so they hope to compile better details from more current Statistics Canada information.