WESTLOCK – The Town of Westlock has joined a growing list of municipalities who’ve left the Grizzly Regional Economic Alliance Society (GROWTH Alberta), a one-time alliance of 11 communities, two school boards and four supporting agencies based in Barrhead.
Established in 2001 and incorporated as a not-for-profit society in September 2002 to “provide economic development support and promotion for its member communities”, GROWTH only counts the County of Barrhead, Lac Ste. Anne County, Woodlands County, Town of Swan Hills and Town of Mayerthorpe as current members.
The Town of Westlock’s Jan. 1, 2022, withdrawal was noted in a Dec. 2 letter to the association penned by mayor Ralph Leriger which stated that following budget discussions council decided to pull out noting, “the varying degrees of participation by regional municipalities, the reduction in provincial funding for REDA and the significant financial challenges faced in preparing the 2022 budget.”
In a follow-up interview, Leriger said that dropping out of GROWTH, which cost the municipality $8,000 annually, has “been discussed a dozen times over the last three years and finally came to that point.” The letter to GROWTH was included in the town’s Dec. 13 meeting information package.
“What we’ve seen is the on-again, off-again participation of many of our neighbouring municipalities … three of any significant size that were left were Woodlands County, Lac Ste. Anne County and us,” said Leriger. “And since we started our own regional economic development initiative with Westlock County and the Village of Clyde we thought we needed to put money towards that initiative and keep it more local.”
One of nine regional economic development alliances in Alberta, GROWTH temporarily suspended operations in October 2020 due to the fact that a new funding agreement with the province had yet to be signed — the deal was eventually inked, but provided only $50,000 yearly, half of the previous contract.
During that process long-time GROWTH executive director Troy Grainger left the organization, which has yet to hire a permanent replacement. Grainger last appeared in front of town council in September 2020 touting a nearly-completed revamped website geared towards “investment readiness” and said the municipal membership dollars were netting an eight-to-one return.
Meanwhile, a Dec. 21 call to the number listed on GROWTH’s website was forwarded to a cellphone unconnected to the organization, while the website appears to have not been updated since 2020 and still lists 10 member municipalities.
George Blais, TownandCountryToday.com
“We just weren’t seeing the value out of it. It was hard for GROWTH to provide good value to its communities when they lost 50 per cent of its funding from the province,” Leriger added. “It (the funding cut) hurt the smaller ones (REDAs) more than the larger ones.”
