Chamber of Commerce “Power Hour” brings elected officials together

“When businesses if they want to invest and renovate if it’s a mill rate only [increase] the value of what they invest to increase the value of their business, it exponentially goes up with the mill rate,” he said. “So if you use more of just a base tax on the business community or even a resident in a home and they do renovate to make their home better, they don’t exponentially have to pay more in taxation to have a better home.”

As a result Leslie said using a base tax is a nice balance to allow people and businesses to invest in their present homes and businesses without costing them an increased amount of money.

“We’re trying to help the businesses survive and strive as best we can,” he added.

Gillan said he wants to bring more businesses to the Battlefords so more people are paying a share of the taxation to lighten the burden on residents and businesses.

“The whole idea is we need to grow the pie, because at the end of the day: what is the cost of running the city is driving taxation,” he said. “It’s not how much me as a homeowner is paying versus what [someone else] is paying. The question is: what is the total cost of running the City of North Battleford?”

Gillan said the city offers the InnovationPlex, a state-of-the art facility that doesn’t come without increased costs.

“We’re talking about new rinks, we have the biggest RCMP detachment in the province,” he added. “We have a lot of costs, but safety is important, parks and recreation is important. These are all important parts of our lives. We as an elected government, we look at the cost of the City of North Battleford. And, we will build a new arena in the next five years too. That’s going to add more cost as well. So I keep coming back to: Let’s grow the pie. Let’s grow more people here to pay the cost, because we don’t want the community to fight amongst ourselves…It’s more, let’s get more people contributing to the high standard of living that we have in the city.”

Another question put to the leaders was what can be done to create more affordable housing here.

Battlefords MLA Jeremy Cockrill said the province has a new incentive to encourage people to look at adding secondary suites to their homes that might help young people looking for different affordable housing options.

He also pointed out that Saskatchewan compared to other provinces has more affordable housing available overall.

“I think there is some space that as a province we can be talking more about this across the country. But I think even as individual municipalities and regions this is a huge opportunity..,” the MLA said. “Even though there are of course housing challenges throughout that housing spectrum, but comparatively across the country we still have some of the most affordable housing in the country.”

Gillan noted that the city takes the issue about housing needs seriously.

He added that the city is also looking at some of the existing stock of housing in North Battleford that isn’t being utilized because it’s in disrepair that has potential for future use, as another option.

On the issue of the CSI report, Gillan noted that the city along with many smaller city leaders in the province are working to have the index reviewed as it unfairly skews them compared to much larger cities.

“There’s many ways to look at crime, not just this model,” he said.

Gillan added that the problem with the CSI is that it destroys the reputations of the communities that rank high on the list.

“I’m working to resolve this…,” he added.

Semaganis noted he would have liked to have been invited to the CSI conference that was held last week in Saskatoon, and said area First Nations want to work with the city as Treaty partners on this issue.

“We want to be part of the solution,” he said.

He stressed in his talk during the event that the First Nations want to be active partners with the municipalities, and take a regional approach to deal with issues in the Battlefords area.

In her comments, Falk noted that crime itself is a very complex issue.

“It isn’t just going to be fixed overnight, when we look at the root causes of crime,” she said. “At the end of the day, governments of all levels should be working together, and communities. Local communities are the best to answer a lot of these questions because it’s their communities… Stats Can is responsible for gathering the data. They are legislated to gather the data, but what I understand from my conversations that I’ve had with them is how they gather that, there’s flexibility with that. So I have asked him [Gillan] to keep me apprised, and also to include me in correspondence,… so if there is anything that we can do behind the scenes to propel something forward, we are willing to collaborate.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @battlefordsnow

by Angela Brown

Chamber of Commerce “Power Hour” brings elected officials together

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