A pair of motions were brought to Lethbridge City Council Tuesday support one another as they focus on how future investment will work in the community.
The motions regarding Long-Term Financial Sustainability Framework and Economic Development Research and support were co-sponsored by councillors Jenn Schmidt-Rempel and Belinda Crowson. According to Crowson what the sustainability framework will look like is still unknown but council-directed administration has until the first quarter of 2026 for the longstanding financial principles and practices to be laid out so the new council to set their strategic vision and how they want to achieve it.
“So that was speaking specifically to the fiscal framework that we’re looking at putting together, and really, it’s more than just our administration going and putting that together. That is council taking the leadership and taking that leadership role to make sure that a bylaw or something is formed to get all those policies and principles together under one cohesive package, and that will lead us into the future and lead our administration into the future, lead our council into future decisions, and it really just puts everything together and it fulfills our legislative mandate,” she states.
The second motion put forward focuses on incentives and other parts of Lethbridge’s economic growth, a strategy Crowson says is vital.
“We do not have a good framework. We don’t have a strategy around it, and that strategy, according to staff, is going to take probably about a year to create, and so Councillor Schmidt-Rempel and I went to them and said, ‘if you had resources, could we move this along faster?,’” Crowson says.
Administration was directed to present what resources will be needed to help complete the strategy quicker at the July 10th Economic and Finance standing policy committee.
“That strategy will sort of set out the economic goals for the community through what council will be working on.”
“We will work with our partners, [Lethbridge and District Exhibition], Tourism [Lethbridge] and other partners who actually take the strategy and implement it to make sure we develop the best possible strategy as quickly as we can for the community.”
Ahead of the upcoming Economic and Finance standing policy committee meeting, Schmidt-Rempel says council will be taking part in a workshop.
“[The workshop] will look at some of those bits and pieces we already have in place in order to put together an economic strategy, so we have our municipal development plan in place, we have our asset management in place [and look at] how can we pull all of those different pieces together to build one good strategy that involves our partners as well,” she says.
Crowson says these motions and frameworks are important to put in place because council needs to be the guiding force behind the community’s economic strategy.
“We have this thing where we often give fee-for-service groups the ability to work with us, so instead of having admin do it we put it out into the community. It still has to be guided by a council strategy, and this is putting council back in charge of the economic strategy for Lethbridge.”
Schmidt-Rempel adds it is important to sure everyone is in alignment and moving the city forward.
“We’re all moving in the same direction, and that council is providing that strategic direction. In what we want to do, what do we want to see as investments coming here? What do we want to, how do we want to retain and encourage business development and growth?”
The city’s fee-for-service partners also have been invited to attend the July 10th meeting.
