British Columbia · Civic arena
Vernon drinking water hardness is 148 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#191 of 343
49% City Score XP
7/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
Vernon packs 7 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas.
Full Vernon water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Kelowna · vs SquamishHardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for Vernon from municipal and provincial water records. Hardness and grade are published readings.
Drinking water first, then permits, tax, internet, radon, and hazards for Vernon.
Vernon sits at City Score rank #191 with a standing of 49%, from 7 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. Dropping 43 places versus 2022 (#148 → #191).
Latest owned placements: building permit value rank #110 of 343 (2025); indoor radon rank #253 of 343 at 98 Bq/m³ survey mean; residential mill rate rank #143 of 343 (10.51 mill rate). Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #191 of 343
7/8 pillars · main XP bar
Rank #220
Rank #110
Rank #253
Rank #253
No placement
Rank #143
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for Vernon.
Hillside walking network that reuses canal corridors across several Vernon neighbourhoods. Dog-walkers and after-dinner hikers treat
Okanagan Landing park with beach, boat launch, and play amenities on the Vernon arm of Okanagan Lake. It is the lake-day counterweight
The city parks directory itself labels the main Kalamalka swimming spot Kal (Kalamalka) Beach.
Where Vernon sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Vernon orients around water more than a single downtown square. On the municipal parks list, Kal Beach is the short form for Kalamalka Lake swimming, with Kin Beach and Paddlewheel Park holding the Okanagan Lake side along Tronson Road and Okanagan Landing Road. Polson Park keeps a central sports and skateboard footprint on Highway 6. Above the grid, the Grey Canal Trail stitches hillside walking segments that locals treat as everyday infrastructure, not a one-weekend hike.
Kal Tire Place is the arena name that doubles as an emergency address when fire season turns serious. City pages have put Emergency Support Services there during the Bradley Creek wildfire, while Greater Vernon Water Stage 3 restrictions remind everyone that a dry July is a civic file, not just a garden complaint. The Morning Star still brands the beat North Okanagan, so Commonage Road grass fires and Silver Star mountain events travel on the same local desk as city notices.
Okanagan Indian Band links sit on the city homepage for a reason: regional emergency talk and community coverage keep crossing municipal lines. BX Falls adds a named hike when the beaches feel crowded, and Polson Park remains the easy central meetup when someone just wants shade and a playground. On the OpenStats City Score for 2026, Vernon sits at rank 108 of 125. The hometown read is simpler: Kal Beach shorthand, two lake shores, Grey Canal paths, and a rec barn that becomes an ESS centre when the hills burn.
Drawn from City of Vernon parks, City of Vernon, Vernon Morning Star.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by estimated best advertised download (Mbps). Anchored to the current ISED National Broadband Data vintage, then backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber-arrival and 50/10 availability paths so relative ranks can change over the decade. Not a claim of audited historical hex maps for every year.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Construction · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by calendar-year building permit value. Direct rows sum Statistics Canada Table 34-10-0292-01. Cities without a direct reading use population × provincial per-capita permit intensity (estimated), so every seed city has a year-varying construction signal.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Composite · OpenStats
OpenStats
Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016–2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0–1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Growth and CSI use StatCan annual tables; permits, mill rates, and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Safety · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index (Table 35-10-0026-01). Rank 1 is highest CSI (worse). Values are CMA where a metro match exists, otherwise provincial CSI. Hometown pages label the grain.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Growth · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Property tax · OpenStats
OpenStats
Municipalities ranked by residential mill rate. Rank 1 is the highest rate. Published municipal years are used when available; gaps are interpolated or follow the provincial median path so the tax pillar moves year to year for every city.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Livability
Maclean's
Successor-style municipal livability ranking published by Maclean's for 2019 and 2021 (no 2020 edition).
Single edition · 2021
Only one published edition places Vernon in this study so far. Open the edition for method notes and the full table.
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Paddlewheel Park sits on the Vernon arm of Okanagan Lake with a beach, boat launch, and playground cluster.
Grey Canal Trail appears as a multi-segment walking network across Bella Vista, Coldstream Estates, East Vernon, and Silver Star foothills.
Kal Tire Place has served as an ESS reception centre during Bradley Creek wildfire response.
Greater Vernon Water Stage 3 restrictions are posted as a standing summer civic notice on the city homepage.
The Kalamalka Lake swim beach locals name in three letters. Volleyball courts and washrooms make it the default hot-day destination on the municipal list.
Okanagan Landing park with beach, boat launch, and play amenities on the Vernon arm of Okanagan Lake. It is the lake-day counterweight to Kal Beach.
Hillside walking network that reuses canal corridors across several Vernon neighbourhoods. Dog-walkers and after-dinner hikers treat the segments as local streets with better views.
Named hike on Tillicum Road in the city parks inventory. It is the waterfall outing when the beaches are full and you still want a Vernon address.
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