St. Albert’s high profile and surging popularity in the investment community means the city no longer has any reason to offer any kind of discount or incentive to attract industry, councillors heard Monday.
Sitting as the standing committee on finance, all six councillors and the mayor voted down the idea of offering any special incentive to industry. Guy Boston, the city’s executive director of economic development, reported a few months ago that incentives were needed but now he says they aren’t.
“Right now we are nicely positioned,” Boston said.
In January, Boston came forward with three ideas to give business a reason to come to St. Albert. He suggested letting businesses pay cash in place of the 10 per cent of land they would have to give to the city, deferring payment of property taxes for a period of time and offering grants or rebates for environmentally-friendly upgrades.
But St. Albert is riding a fairly high profile right now, Boston said, so there is really no reason to offer a “coupon” of sorts to move here. He pointed to the city’s recent ranking in MoneySense magazine as the best small city in Canada, the second-best city in Canada and third-best place to raise a family.
“You put all that together and you wonder why would you try to play with that,” Boston said. “There are so many dynamics and it seems to be working well.”
Other factors working in favour of the city are access to Anthony Henday Drive, enshrining all 617 acres of the employment lands in the municipal development plan and the buzz coming off the city’s business breakfast in February, Boston said.
“Those that weren’t investing (in St. Albert), we’ve had calls from them wanting to know more.”
In its feedback on the proposals, the St. Albert economic development advisory committee said the city should look at one of the ideas – cash for land – as simply a matter of course. Other communities will allow business to pay cash instead of giving land to the city if it means sealing the deal. Boston said the committee believes the city needs to consider it.
“(The committee is saying) if the investor says, ‘I’m willing to pay that,’ other communities are saying ‘sure’ more often than we are,” Boston said.
But Coun. Cathy Heron, chair of the standing committee on finance, said the recent tension over the location of a proposed bike skills park is proof St. Albert needs more, not less, land from businesses and residential developers.
“The fact (the bike park issue) exploded is because we had no municipal reserve to choose from,” Heron said. “If we had some land out in an industrial area, that might be a great place.”
