It seems that no topic has been safe over the past few months surrounding choices and decisions made by our city council. Even decisions that were made quite some time ago have been dredged back up, hashed over and in some cases, even the reason of blame for some of Chestermere’s current issues.
One of these is the decision that Chestermere City Council made to upgrade Chestermere to a city. Effective January 1, 2015 we became the City of Chestermere and it really appears that nothing much changed aside from the sign on the municipal building. But as this decision continues to come up on social media and in conversations, I had an interview with Jean-Marc Lacasse, Manager of Economic Development with the City of Chestermere to revisit the city status topic and find out if it has made a huge difference in our community.
Lacasse confirmed that since becoming a city, there hasn’t been any changes in city staffing by way of hiring large numbers of additional staff and there has also not been major policy changes, pay increases or any of those types of things. On the City of Chestermere website under the ‘Council’ tab, there is a menu item that shows what our Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Councillors make.: Mayor = $65,000; Deputy Mayor = $35,530 and Councillors = 30,530. “Nobody got paid more because we became a city. We didn’t double our staff because we became a city. Everything is pretty much the same. We didn’t’ even have to change business cards because they just said ‘Chestermere’ on them – they did not specific town or city. Those claims are pretty farfetched”, said Lacasse.
Lacasse went on to explain, “The debate between town and city is always a very emotional one. I did a bit of research back a year and a half ago when this all popped out and took a look at other communities that had done this and how they handled this. I found two communities out of Ontario that had the debate on town vs. city. The town of Markham, which is now the city of Markham, and the town of Oakville – both being in the greater Toronto area. Markham had approximately 300,000 people when it was a town and Oakville had approximately 200,000 people. These are communities that have been established for three hundred years. So this debate was actually around economic development for those two communities and kind of similar to Chestermere at that time being that the reason for debating becoming a city was all about economic development”.
“Markham decided to become a city because they wanted to rebrand themselves and be able to attract employers. They wanted to develop some industrial sectors and that was their strategy to be able to rebrand, be on the map as a city and they would actually be able to attract more industries. Now, the town of Oakville, that has the same debate, they decided to stay a town. Oakville wanted to keep the town feel that they had but you have to keep in mind that there is 200,000 people there and they are three hundred years old – so they did not see the incentive to change because of economic development. Now, that’s easy to do if you’re in Oakville and you have the head offices of Ford Canada, Tim Hortons, Siemens… major employers are already there and they already have an industrial and manufacturing base”, explained Lacasse. “If we bring this now back to Chestermere – what does Chestermere need right now? Chestermere needs industrial development, manufacturing and it needs an employment centre – places where people can go to work. We did go back and forth…’if the Town of Chestermere becomes the City of Chestermere, what would happen? And I remember that debate and then it happened and made page three of the Calgary Herald when council voted to become a city. The next day I remember attending an economic development conference in Calgary and when I now said that I was from the now City of Chestermere, I had three business cards in five minutes from a broker, a business that was interested in relocating and I had the President of a major chain in Canada that came to me and gave me his card”.
Lacasse went on to say that being a city from an economic development stand point is that it opens the door. It’s like being moved up from eating at the kids table to now getting invited to eat at the grown-ups table. “When I attend trade shows where we have those conversations with businesses and try to entice them to Chestermere, you get a better reaction by being able to say the ‘City of Chestermere’ vs ‘Town of Chestermere’. And if I’m speaking to someone that isn’t quite sure where we are, I always tell them “we’re more likely known for our suburb, Calgary”… everyone has a chuckle and the conversation continues”, adds Lacasse.
When I asked Lacasse what the cons have been since Chestermere became a city, he paused briefly and said, “As far as I know, there are none. This community is fairly new and it has a brand, but it’s not an established brand in the sense where people don’t see it or understand it so it is the time to go out and market the new brand. And the new brand is that nothing has changed, except we have the word city”.
The efforts of Lacasse and other city staff members to bring business to Chestermere is much like a sales job that entails going to trade shows and reaching out to those that are interested in coming to our great city. As much as they are speaking to those businesses, the city also wanted to make sure that they took into account what businesses Chestermere residents want to see in our city. So, that is one of the reasons why you may have seen and heard about the shopping survey taking place. Running from Tuesday, April 5 to Saturday, April 9, the survey team, from Keyfax Market Research, asked residents a variety of questions from where they do most of their grocery shopping, to what kind of stores would be important to see in Chestermere. The results of this survey will give the city a better idea of what Chestermere residents do and do not want to see for businesses and shopping options.
So, did becoming a city make us different? Did we lose anything by becoming a city? Did we gain anything from becoming a city? Well, everyone will likely have their own opinion on this, but if you ask Jean-Marc, he says “Is the community different? Does it smell different? Does it feel different? No. Chestermere is still the same. But in terms of marketing, it has been a game changer for us”.
