I WILL continue to work to establish a downtown proper on Main Street reducing reliance on residential property tax

The town’s role in the redevelopment of Beach 1 and the development of a downtown proper was the established number one priority of the council this term. Despite this fact and without knowing the town’s required financial commitment to complete our #1 priority, the council in a 6 to 1 vote, approved relocating and spending $60 million on the new library/arena project, which is our # 2 priority.

When I brought this forward in an open session of council the mayor indicated that she would never put the downtown development ahead of the services we need to provide our residents and that the downtown needed to be developed through organic growth.

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I invite residents to review the original master plan document and public meeting information as it clearly identifies the benefits of a well-planned downtown. The most financially viable downtowns studied could be walked in 10-12 minutes, took up approximately 2.5% of the municipalities landmass and generated 25% of the town’s revenue.

A community hub as the southern anchor at Main & Beck consisting of the library, arena, cultural centre, town square, and commercial development, along with the Beach 1 redevelopment of the tourist district, as the northern anchor, would have resulted in a financially successful downtown. These important anchors would be an effective catalyst in attracting additional development investment and greatly reduce our extremely high reliance on residential property tax. More importantly in my opinion it would have resulted in substantial Provincial and Federal grant funding for both the construction of the library / double pad arena and the redevelopment of our Beach1 tourist district. I was confident that this plan would attract many new businesses to provide the product and services that our residents currently need to source out of town generating economic benefit to our neighbouring municipalities instead of our own