Positive ‘State of the City’ address from Mayor

The city also boasts an $88 million increase in building permits in 2016 over 2015.

A lot of the good news rests with the city’s slow but, steady progress and diversified economy. As the Mayor pointed out, “a good year we grow by two per cent and in a bad year we grow by two per cent.”

Spearman did note caution when dealing with the sleeping elephant next door. Because of our local manufacturing, he doesn’t want to see anything that provokes trade challenges.

“We see with President Trump in the United States wanting jobs to stay in the United States, we could see, possibly with a lower Canadian dollar, some businesses in the U.S. would see that as an opportunity to launch a trade challenge against Canadian businesses, and, of course, that would affect investment and employment in Canada, so we want to be careful that businesses choose the city as a great place to invest because of other reasons – we won’t be offering subsidies but, what we will be doing .is supporting them and providing a high level of service and telling them that we have a highly trained and educated workforce.”

According to the Mayor, “A city with a population of 100,000, a University and a College is unusual and we have great graduates here who would make great employees.”

Although the city ‘sitting pretty’ compared to other locations in the province, it does face some challenges. Spearman says there is a long list of wants and requests for infrastructure in Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) but only about $5 Million for capital funding in 2017, which Spearman concedes is a relatively small amount.

“In terms of funding a third bridge for $150 Million, or a Performing Art Centre for $75-Million or a Convention Centre – $90-Million – we don’t have the funds to do that – we don’t have the funds to do that and we want to be realistic – we also have a number of community groups that are asking for capital assets to be created.”

City Council will go through a process for the next three-months where they evaluate all the requests, to determine the best way to leverage the dollars and maximize the spending power. The Mayor says Council will work to ensure the process is not political and each project will be evaluated fairly, in terms of the need and the benefit for the city. However, he says the planning it will be a challenging CIP process. Some of the planning will probably be for five to ten years down the road.

by Dori Modney (@Dori_Modney on Twitter)

Positive ‘State of the City’ address from Mayor

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