The City of Kimberley is celebrating a year of progress, with several major projects underway and more planned ahead of the next municipal election in 2026.
Kimberley Mayor, Don McCormick said major movement this year on the long awaited Wastewater Treatment plant has been a huge achievement.
“Primarily because it’s a massive project at $90 million and it’s taken a long time to get to the point that we’re at now. We are confident that we will have all the things in place to be able to get shovels in the ground in April” said McCormick.
On the issue of housing, McCormick said the city has not only fulfilled provincial requirements but has gone beyond them.
“We’re trying to focus on higher density and this year we saw several multi-unit residential projects in the tens of millions of dollars that came into play and are going to supply the community with purpose built rental, which is badly needed”. McCormick said.
An overriding challenge that Kimberly has had this year has been around granting. Getting grants in place and looking for funding in the short term has been a real challenge primarily because of the provincial government deficit.
“A $12 billion deficit means there’s not an awful lot of extra money to go around. So if we have challenges that come up within the course of a year, beyond what has already been in place it’s very very difficult to get money”. McCormick stated.
An example in Kimberly, here is a project that’s in place for the Mark Creek watershed. The plan is to build resilience into the logging that is happening up in that water shed. To do that we need half a million dollars to be able to complete the modelling required to provide us with direction on how to log in the watershed.
He pointed to one specific need: funding for wildfire adaptation work in the Mark Creek watershed.
“The Wildfire Adaptation for Mark Creek watershed is a really really important project because it really is about the future of our water supply in Kimberly. I’m really looking forward to figuring out how we get the money to complete the modelling and moving forward with the next phases of that project.” said McCormick.
Mayor McCormick wants to highlight that 2026 is a civic election year and that it will be a busy first half of the year.
“As we move forward in 2026 we really need to get the majority of the work done in the first six months of the year because starting July. 1 all the way to election day on Oct. 17 there’s probably not a lot of material things that will be able to get done.” McCormick said.
McCormick and the city want to thank the public for their ongoing support and patience.
“On behalf of not just myself but council and staff at the city of Kimberly we really really appreciate resident support on all of the activities that we have throughout the year. Many of these things particularly when it comes to construction are not easy and we really appreciate the understanding and patience folks have shown as we complete these very important projects”. said McCormick.
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