ATHABASCA – Athabasca County will look to partner with Alberta Hub in order to maximize a Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) micro-grant designed to help municipalities increase economic development.
During their June 29 council meeting, councillors voted 9-0 in favour of a motion that will see the municipality bring four topics to Alberta Hub, after the regional body requested members combine an RMA micro-grant application to get more mileage out of the funds.
Ultimately the county could get up to $10,000 which would be used for the airport, “green” and “brown” zones for future industrial development, ways to enhance capacity for economic development support and rail — green zones promote ecologically friendly practices, whereas brown zones are zoned areas that still use fossil fuels.
“One of the ideas was that (Alberta Hub) would look at airports, and what they could do with them in the region,” said Coun. Camille Wallach, who brought forward the request for decision. “Cold Lake is part of Alberta Hub, and they obviously have a big airport there, but looking at ways we could use our airport differently may be a potential opportunity.”
RMA will give each successful applicant $10,000, which sounds like a lot, but can be small potatoes when it comes to hiring consultants, as councillors pointed out.
“I applaud Alberta Hub for recommending this united approach, I don’t think you would get much of a feasibility study done for $10,000 on your own,” said Coun. Ashtin Anderson.
While also taking into account Athabasca County's lack of an economic development officer as the Tourism and Economic Development (TED) committee gets reworked, Wallach thought that partnering in the greater region would work best for the county.
“I think it makes a lot of sense to compile data on a common interest topic, and it can benefit all of the partners. I really like the idea of compiling data on airport usage, and how we can improve our usage of it. That would be my No. 1 recommendation. I do like the idea of green and brown zones; I just think that would be a much longer undertaking.”
Coun. Gary Cromwell asked if setting the county’s priorities early and then applying for the funding could potentially cross up Alberta Hub’s usage of the funds.
“What if Alberta Hub as a region decides to look at something else instead? Are we going to cause an issue by figuring out topics right now, or is that going to be decided by them once a certain amount of funds have been distributed into the account,” asked Cromwell.
Wallach responded that Alberta Hub is hoping to have the main discussion for the topics at a July 13 meeting, and then each municipality would go back and approve it before they apply.
In a July 14 follow up, Wallach said that the regional body had been unable to come to a decision during the meeting, which was attended by interim CAO Pat Vincent, and the board will discuss it further.
For reeve Brian Hall, the possibility of enhancing the municipality’s capacity for economic development was intriguing.
“I also like the idea of research around enhancing capacity to support economic development; I think it’s a term we talk about a lot, but when you try to nail down what it specifically is, it gets hard. There are so many little gears, almost like a watch. There are thousands of little things going on in the background, so let’s figure out how to learn from that.”
