M.L. councillor candidates on business improvement

With Meadow Lake’s municipal election only eight days away, meadowlakeNOW spoke with the councillor candidates to gather their thoughts on business improvement in the city.

Over the past few years, business growth remains steady with new locations including Tim Hortons, Boston Pizza and Home Hardware being and existing places such as Madill’s Drugs, Martodam’s Clothing and Co-op going through major renovations.

Despite the steady growth, every candidate vying for a council seat feels there’s room for improvement.

“Meadow Lake is one of the hubs for the northwest so business is important,” incumbent council candidate Conrad Read said. “Over the last four years, we’ve worked on reducing the taxes commercial properties pay (as one way to encourage growth.)”

In the past business taxes were subsidized by residential so council worked to even out the rates.

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Being a city, Meadow Lake doesn’t have any big box stores. Read said council did research and people made visits to see what’s available, however, they’re also looking at the population the community serves and what type of traffic volume passes by.

“Let’s say a Walmart, they wouldn’t even consider something unless there’s maybe a population of 10,000. We’ve ventured out and invested some money in looking at somebody bringing these big name stores to our community and we haven’t had luck,” Read said. “It’s not up to the city (to build), if the city needs one or requires one, it would be a developer or Walmart themselves.”

In terms of the downtown business core, there’s a half dozen buildings for rent, boarded up, or lots for lease. Read said it would be ideal to have occupants in each of the buildings.

He said if someone were to approach city council with an incentive or grant idea, council would have to look at it. Whether or not it would be entertained is a different question.

“We would have to look at the benefits, pros and cons, and can we afford it but I think everything’s on the table to do, we just need some good business rational to proceed with something like that,” he added.

While different incentives could be discussed, another incumbent council candidate Curtis Paylor explained there is a tax incentive program for new businesses who want to open up shop in the downtown core.

Council passed a commercial property tax incentive bylaw which gives a rebate to property owners in the downtown commercial district. In this case, the tax rebate is based on the increase in assessment for any improvements made. This means if a business owner on Centre St. were to build an addition, they would see a rebate of 100 per cent in the first year, then 50 per cent, then 25 per cent, but only for the portion of their taxes that relates to that addition.

More information on the tax-incentive can be found here.

“It’s becoming fairly typical for businesses to go out to the main routes and the highways so it’s been a struggle to find these incentives to attract business to our downtown core,” Paylor said. “Providing incentives such as beautification grants could be a short-term means to improve the downtown business core.”

In terms of box stores, Paylor said he fully supports them as he believes they get people to stay in the community while having a subsequent affect on other businesses.

While having a box store could take business away from the current shops here, it does create a traffic flow they might need according to Paylor.

Incumbent candidate Kim Chiverton added he’d like to see more growth.

“I think it’s been exciting to see the number of businesses which have come to town recently and within that we’ve seen great growth. My concern is downtown, a lot of those (new businesses) are on the border and outside of the downtown area,” he said. “I’d really like to see us rejuvenate the downtown area and core, hopefully encourage in some way to get people interested in developing businesses downtown and creating a real nice community down there.”

Chiverton would consider business improvement grants, but said it all comes down to cost. Any grant opportunity would have to be examined in terms of what bill the taxpayers would foot and what kind of investment return.

He added it would be nice to know where locals shop and what requires them to leave town for their shopping.

“Is it pricing or just traveling on the weekends to get out of town? Finding those things out and if there is something stopping them from shopping locally then if we could find that out and address it, it would sure be a help to businesses locally and to our community overall,” he said.

Incumbent Merlin Seymour said he wants to work closer with the Chamber of Commerce to draw new businesses into the community while encouraging residents from outlying towns to shop in Meadow Lake instead of going elsewhere.

If he were to support business improvement grants, Seymour said he would want to offer something to already renovated businesses.

Newcomer Glen Winkler said there’s lots of models other cities have tried for business improvement that Meadow Lake’s council can look at and rob ideas from.

He said if elected, he wants to talk with Flying Dust, the Chamber of Commerce and the R.M. to see if it would be viable to hire an economic development officer.

“For other communities our size and the distance we are from major cities, I believe we’re lagging in the development and it would be nice to see us grow in that area with a specific plan,” Winkler said.

Feeling the opportunity is here, newcomer Tom Harrison said if elected, he wants to cut red tape surrounding new developments. As an example, he mentioned the city’s new Boston Pizza restaurant, a project finally coming to fruition after years of development.

Candidate Richard Levesque did not return comment by deadline.

Vying for the six councillor chairs are incumbents Conrad Read, Kim Chiverton, Curtis Paylor, Merlin Seymour, and newcomers Tom Harrison, Richard Levesque, and Glen Winkler are seeking election.

Mayor Gary Vidal was acclaimed following the Sept. 21 nomination deadline. 

Voters cast their ballots on Oct. 26 at the civic centre.

Advance polls are being held on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at city hall and mail-in ballots are being accepted for the first time this election.

Colton Swiderski is meadowlakeNOW’s municipal affairs, crime and court, health and education reporter. He can be reached at cswiderski@jpbg.ca or tweet him @coltonswiderski.