St. Paul Region CARES

Community Futures, Chamber, and Alberta HUB team up to discover regional goals.

St. Paul regional partners are working to ensure the pieces of the economic development puzzle for the area come together. Community Futures St. Paul, the St. Paul Chamber and Alberta HUB are going after a CARES (Community and Regional Economic Support) Grant for funding to conduct a strategic plan for the area. The grant application is supported by the local municipalities; the Town & County of St. Paul and the Town of Elk Point.

St. Paul Chamber President, Kevin Bernhardt says what really excites him about the strategic plan is the implementation. “What excites me the most about the CARES grant, is it’s a grant that has deliverables build right into it. You have to produce. It’s going to be a strategical plan for the region and there’s going to be [actions] put in place.” The project will continue and develop with the region, says Bernhardt, “it’s not something that has a sharp end, it’s something that keeps rolling.”

If approved, an application for a Regional CARES Grant to work on a Regional Strategic Plan for Economic Development for the area will be forwarded. The application will be for a total of $50,000 with $25,000 to be funded from the participating municipalities, potentially based on population. There will be multiple phases to the grant, phase one being the approval and planning, phase two the implementation and so on, says Bernhardt, “it’s allowing us to get together and do something we all want. Working in one solid direction. So we’re able to, as a large area, capitalize for the benefit of everyone.”

Penny Fox with Community Futures says it’s time to look at goals regionally, “let’s have those discussions about what kind of quality of life we want as a region and what kind of quality of life does [each municipality] want and let’s make sure we’re working together to do that.” It’s about bringing all the information together, says Fox, “we have all these different agencies that are doing different things and we have all these pieces of information that we know. First of all we need to figure out what we already have and then what we are missing and where we are going.”

“As an economic development strategy [this plan] transfers over, because it involves the Town & County of St. Paul and Town of Elk Point,” Alberta HUB Executive Director, Bob Bespalko, “from my perspective, Alberta HUB promotes each community from a regional context. A formal economic development strategy is the first step.”

The partners will be applying for the CARES grant before the May 31st deadline. It is unknown how long the application process will take. Should the group be successful a professional strategic planner will come to the region and host sessions will all stakeholders to develop a regional strategic plan. The plan will look at the short-term and long-term goals for the region, as well as discover the strengths & weaknesses, opportunities & threats for the area.