Articles related to Community Excellence Awards winners and calls for applications.
The City of Victoria was recognized at the 2024 Community Excellence Awards for its concerted and creative effort to revitalize the downtown core through OUR DWTN, a program that zeroes in on safety, cleanliness, beautification and activation.
Sustainability often refers to renewable materials and environmental metrics. But this year’s winner of Excellence in Sustainability took a step back and reimagined its whole planning framework through a sustainable lens. The City of Nanaimo was recognized for Excellence in Sustainability for its city plan, integrated action plan and monitoring strategy called, Nanaimo ReImagined
The City of Kelowna was recognized by UBCM’s Community Excellence Awards for its new enterprise asset management system. To help manage its estimated $7 billion in infrastructure assets, the City of Kelowna spent five years developing an enterprise asset management system that now connects the work of more than 700 staff members.
The District of Central Saanich was recognized by the UBCM Presidents Committee for outstanding achievement in transparent planning and reporting at this year’s Community Excellence Awards. The winning project took a disjointed and siloed planning process that caused frustration and confusion – and turned it into an integrated framework to make collaborative progress on community priorities.
UBCM presented the 2024 Community Excellence Awards on Tuesday evening. These awards have been offered since 2004 with a goal of celebrating excellence in local governments and providing a forum for our members to learn from one another’s successes. We would like to congratulate all winners who are leading the way with vision, creativity and innovation.
Sustainability is a mindset relevant in several core local government operations. In Metro Vancouver, one award-winning example is the Lulu Island Renewable Natural Gas Facility. The facility captures and cleans excess biogas from wastewater treatment and sells the scrubbed gas to FortisBC for residential distribution. The facility takes waste, and turns it into a resource.
The City of Surrey took action to proactively address community safety concerns in response to increasing gun and gang violence. It developed a collaborative program, called the Surrey Anti-Gang Family Empowerment Program (“SAFE”), which brought together 11 partner agencies to deliver support to at-risk youth.
Six years ago, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and the City of Kamloops co-hosted their first Community to Community forum after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its 95 Calls to Action. That gathering, and momentum from the national TRC process, inspired the City and First Nation to commit to building genuine relationships to work towards progress on the Calls to Action that were within a local government’s purview.
With Community Excellence Awards coming up (deadline to submit a nomination is May 17, 2024), we checked in with one of last year’s winners to find out how their asset management project is going, and what winning meant for their team.
“Nothing symbolizes inefficiency in local government more than when a municipality paves a road one year, only to go dig it up a year or two later to replace a water main,” said Summerland’s mayor Doug Holmes.
Community Excellence Awards nominations close on May 17, 2024. We spoke with one of last year’s winners to learn what winning has meant – and to check in on the winning project, a management practice designed to align the Council’s aspirations with the operational realities of the local government.
Last year, the District of Oak Bay won the Community Excellence Award in Excellence in Governance for their project, titled District of Oak Bay Council Priorities Process: Bridging the Gap Between Council’s Aspirations and Project Delivery.