I want to update tonight on economic development for our city. The role within the City of Dawson Creek has been assigned thru a motion of city council to be the responsibility of the Mayor. The issue of how and who should be handling this is not the purpose of this post. I have attempted to engage different components of economic activities since becoming Mayor. I have reached out to retail, agriculture, Oil and Gas, transportation, etc as all components of our local economy. How this is influenced has a number of factors (I believe) and that gets into the cities Strategic Direction for economic development. Since we have not been able to complete the strategic direction the city will or will not take, the function remains with the Mayor. Hopefully in our January strategic planning session for the new council we will provide some direction on this important matter. You need to have a strategic plan in place before you can put a structure together to meet that plan. The old adage, structure follows strategy. I have been working on a concept over the last 3-4 months on how we can understand and capitalize on some of the activities in our city. I have made amazing contacts with very senior people in the Oil and Gas sector as an example and I have struggled with how to leverage those relationships to our local business sector. I have arranged, what I am calling a Mayors round table for tomorrow afternoon. I have invited a number of senior people to attend representing the Natural Gas industry along with some of our local business community. The purpose is for us to engage the industry folks in addressing what I believe to be 3 gaps or issues with respect to the capacity faced for our city and area. The 3 are as follows: labor/workers, Transportation and Local infrastructure. If we can understand what and how these may affect our communities ability to respond and meet these gaps we can then hopefully build the local business community and grow our local economy. I believe this leads to more workers who live and work in our community which will in turn grow retail, services, and support the overall growth of our city. So tomorrow I have arranged for at least 6 Vice Presidents who are representing companies such as EnCana, TransCanada, Pembina, AltaGas, Tervita, The President of Ferus, The President of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada The President of HawkAir, The President of the Metis Nation of BC as an example of the response I have recd to this initiative. I am holding a 4 hour roundtable discussion with these folks and some of our local business community. I am then hosting them at the EnCana events Centre where we will be providing them with the opportunity at attending the concert tomorrow evening. I feel the strengthening of the relationships and partnerships with the industry people will be a benefit to our cities economic future. I feel if we can promote the community and showcase the event centre with a world class event like the Fogerty concert they will have a much stronger view of our city as a place to build their presence. I know some may feel it is inappropriate to spend tax money on hosting business people to a concert but I feel the opposite. If just one of these major companies decide to start to enhance their own presence but also enhance the contracts for our local service sector this will look very small in the future. If we are able to have industry tell the president of HawkAir they need better flights for their employees it will be money well spent. Anyway the purpose is always to inform and engage the community in what I am up to as your Mayor.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 03:03:58 +0000
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