A new St. Albert economic prosperity policy will clearly spell out what the city wants to achieve and how it will achieve it.
Councillors received the draft documents for information at the Dec. 12 meeting, after interim economic development director Joan Barber explained the overarching policy is intended to set direction for all city departments.
“The entire corporation has a role to play in this policy, not just economic development,” she said.
Barber told council this new policy, which council directed administration to create in September 2015, takes direction from a slew of other related policies and brings a single document to outline the responsibilities of council and administration, the city’s service standards and the focus for economic development.
“The economic prosperity policy establishes the city’s long-term commitment to economic development,” she said. “The (strategic) framework sets the environment for economic development success.”
She explained the purpose of the policy is to establish an overarching plan to economic development, which will supplement existing work being done.
The purpose of the policy is to support the long-term viability of the community by “aggressively” pursuing opportunities that will achieve the desired balance between non-residential and residential assessment. The goal is pegged at 80 per cent residential and 20 per cent non-residential. The city’s current balance is roughly 85/15.
The roles as defined in the policy are fairly straightforward.
Basically, council’s role is to set priorities, goals and desired outcomes, find the money to make it happen and act as ambassadors for economic development.
The city manager’s role is to prepare a three-year work plan, to maintain an emphasis on economic development throughout the corporation, to direct staff accordingly, to periodically review processes to ensure regional competitiveness and to collaborate with business-focused non-governmental organizations.
Expected outcomes include supporting existing business while attracting new investment, achieving the 80/20 assessment ratio, prioritizing non-residential over residential or tourism development, collaborating with other orders of government and the private sector, and to mostly follow a “growth pays for growth” approach to development.
Coun. Cam MacKay praised the policy’s clarity in stating what the goals are and how to achieve them.
“This is probably in the top five policies I’ve ever seen in council in all my years,” he said.
Coun. Sheena Hughes said she was concerned that growth paying for growth isn’t currently the case in the utility-rates model, but otherwise said she was supportive of the stated approach.
Coun. Cathy Heron said she was concerned about the 80/20 split as a goal, arguing it can be difficult to reach because of the need to bring in more residential to support that non-residential development.
“This policy’s intended to be aspirational,” interim city manager Chris Jardine said. “A big chunk of our conversation was that our economic development needs to be about growing our non-residential footprint, because that’s where we derive that economic benefit.”
Coun. Bob Russell said he appreciated the “modest” policy, without the bells and whistles he has been critical of in the past.
“There’s no junkets to Spain in here, which was a real turnoff to a lot of people including myself,” he said.
Council will provide feedback on the policy by Dec. 21, and a final draft is expected to come before council in early 2017.
