(File Photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Growing NB

Council hears results of public meetings on city growth, despite low turnout

Sep 25, 2024 | 4:38 PM

The efforts to learn how to grow North Battleford and become a more business-friendly environment didn’t quite yield the turnout City Manager Randy Patrick expected.

Four public consultations were held but only 43 people in the business community attended. According to the summary submitted and presented during the city council meeting on Monday night, the meetings asked participants for their feedback on where municipal efforts could be best directed to assist with population growth.

“Zoning was a fairly big one,” said Patrick. “Everyone agreed that there needs to be some opening up of the bylaw.”

Patrick said the topic of more mixed-use spaces came up in the talks. While the general agreement from the downtown business group was that they wanted “a retention of larger offices and banks” other groups disagreed and said businesses should go where they need to, he said.

Other topics of conversation included infrastructure, downtown revitalization, dealing with the “Crimetown” reputation and taxes.

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“One of the things that came back was maybe it’s time we start looking at our tax policy itself,” he said. “Take a look at our policies that have been in place for years and years…and maybe take a look and see if that one still makes sense from a, well, perspective of the whole city.”

The city manager said among the issues facing the community is the fact the city has certain amenities that support a larger population than the current one.

“We need to grow our business base simply because there’s only 14,000 people paying for them,” he said. “Without the business and without people moving in to work in the businesses – that’s one of the reasons we have to attract people here.”

Ultimately, the goal is to create a comprehensive approach, especially when it comes to challenges like downtown parking.

Mayor David Gillan said he thought reviewing the tax policy was “a good thing.”

“We have had this fixed split of residential-commercial tax in our city,” he said.

“Regardless of how much of a per cent the commercial takes up in assessment, we’re going to give them ‘X’ amount of tax.”

Due to the length of time the policy has been in place, Gillan didn’t see anything wrong with understanding the numbers.

“I think it’s important to review that maybe every five or 10 years to see if it’s reasonably fair,” he said.

Some councillors expressed a mix of anticipation while others lamented only 43 people attended over the four sessions.

“This is the stuff that I am getting really excited about. When we envisioned economic development return to city administration, this is the kind of stuff that I envisioned,” said Kelli Hawtin.

Calling it the first step, she listed off areas such as policies, bylaws and amendments that council can develop into actionable items to implement change for the community.

“Strategic planning specifically, council, administration about a growth agenda for our city would be incredible,” she said of the next steps announced in the summary.

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

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