I must apologise for my delinquency in maintaining my blog these last two months. May was extremely hectic as I was out of town attending conferences three of the four weeks in May. It seemed that June was spent getting caught up from being away and getting our Annual Report prepared. I am looking forward to the summer months when things quiet down and I have time to get prepared for the 2011 budget process which begins in September.
Both City Council and staff are anxiously awaiting the report of the Federal Panel Review for Prosperity Mine. The final decision for the mine will have a significant impact on our municipality, whether it be positive or negative.
If the Federal Cabinet approves the mine, we will experience a level of growth and activity not recently experienced. Our challenge will be managing growth as opposed to encouraging growth. We will have a role to play in assisting our business community in being able to take advantage of the numerous opportunities associated with the mine. We will also have a significant demand for residential and commercial development which we must be in a position to respond to in a timely and coordinated fashion. As the CAO, I continue to develop organizational contingency plans in anticipation of the mine moving forward and the ICSP process will provide us to tools to ensure our growth is managed in a sustainable manner.
In the unfortunate event that the mine experiences challenges in moving forward, we will need to adjust our Economic Development strategy to address a potential decrease in economic confidence. Economic diversity will become even more important as we will be forced to rely less on the resource sector for our economic fuel.
