It’s been two years since city council and city hall developed initiatives for their strategic plan, and since then, administration has been promoting some of the plan’s recent successes.
Council and administration met with author Doug Griffiths during a strategic planning session on March 3, 2021, to update, revise and enhance the plan’s objectives. Some strategic initiatives developed at that meeting included:
- Creating a climate action plan
- Making a downtown enhancement plan to address the area’s heritage and history
- Marketing Moose Jaw better and hiring a marketing firm or person to push that campaign
- Developing a list of businesses that fit the vision for the agri-food industrial park and proactively encouraging them to move here
Most initiatives have been underway since that meeting or are now completed, a city council report said. Some highlights from the past year include:
- Having the second-highest year of building permits in 2022
- Attracting nearly $1.3 billion in investments during the past four years
- Implementing the climate action plan, leading to a 14-per-cent reduction in emissions and $200,000 in annual electricity savings
- Starting Gazelle artificial intelligence to develop a list of agri-food processing companies to locate to the industrial park
- Holding a branding exercise in August 2022 with Gair Maxwell, who helped develop the “Notorious” brand and subsequent “Get A Life” campaign
- Implementing the “Get A Life” campaign
- Starting updates to downtown heritage signs and enhancing the relationship with downtown businesses
- Implementing — after several years of problems — Enterprise Resource Planning (EPR) software
City administration presented an update about the strategic plan and its initiatives during the April 10 regular council meeting. Included was a report about the city’s economic development strategic focus for 2023 and a summary of the parks and recreation department’s 2022 activities.
The main areas in the economic development strategic report include investment attraction and marketing; skilled workforce attraction; business retention and expansion; cluster strategies and building on existing strengths; tourism; regional collaboration; downtown development; and Aboriginal engagement.
Some highlights from the parks and rec report include:
- Attendance at Kinsmen Sportsplex Pool was 106,908 people, versus 78,111 two years ago and 51,441 three years; 2019’s attendance was 125,146
- Attendance at the Phyllis Dewar Outdoor Pool was 16,340 people, versus 9,765 two years ago and zero three years ago; 2017’s attendance was 19,489
- The total hours booked at the three hockey arenas was 4,363 hours
- Last year there were 1,081 Yara Centre memberships, 864 recreation pass memberships and 343 aquatic memberships; in 2019, those numbers were, respectively, 1,441, 682 and 140
- Total drop-in attendance at Yara Centre last year — fitness centre, turf, track, classes/programs — was 52,095 people; in 2019, that number was 13,269
- Total turf hours booked was 4,253, compared to 2,782 hours in 2019
- Total attendance at community association programs (youths and adults) was 630 people versus 692 in 2019
- Total attendance during the playground program was 4,661 people versus 8,082 in 2019
- Total cremation burials were 173 versus 59 regular burials, versus 125 and 52, respectively, in 2019
- The department resolved 1,066 total service call requests, with forestry (647) and parks and green spaces (194) as the top categories; in 2020, those numbers were 549, 335 and 100, respectively
Coun. Crystal Froese pointed out that many attendance numbers have reached pre-pandemic levels, so she commended staff for working to raise those figures.
Meanwhile, she thought the total service request chart was interesting, especially the number of calls about forestry issues. She wondered if that was due to the two-day blizzard last October.
Derek Blais, director of parks and rec, acknowledged that that snowstorm led to a substantial increase in calls to address downed trees.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, April 24.
