Town of Snow Lake Chief Administrative Officer Jeff Precourt was the guest speaker as the Snow Lake Chamber of Commerce held its second luncheon meeting in as many months recently.
He touched on Snow Lake’s 2009 Sustainability Plan. Back then, the town hired Triple M Group, an engineering company, to lay out a plan for development of the community.
Precourt referred to a map of the town and went through a timeline on development, from 2009 to present.
Pointing to a number of infill lots on the map, he said that since 2009 almost all of those lots were either sold or have houses on them – and a few still require utility services.
Precourt pointed out an area to the west of Cedar Avenue and Lakeshore Drive, another region on the point to the southwest of Lipsey and English Drives, and a final expanse to the northeast off of English Drive.
“Those were the three, kind of, key areas that came out of a number of stakeholder meetings and were identified as areas that justified further thought,” said Precourt. “That plan (2009 Sustainability Plan) was a 2010 Municipal Excellence Award winner and a 2009 Manitoba Planning Award honourable mention, so I think it definitely has some credibility and it had a lot of public input at the time, so it was a good plan.”
Discussions that followed the completion of the plan drove home the fact that it was going to be difficult to implement prior to addressing three main issues: the wastewater treatment plant, crumbling utility lines and outdated lift stations.
“The (wastewater treatment plant) process has been more or less a 10-year plan, originally being considered in 2003,” Precourt said.
“The plant’s construction will end at the outset of this year. Now that we have a water plant and sewer plant constructed, what we’ll have to spend the next number of years looking into is, replacing the utility lines that connect all of that.”
In order to give people an idea of what the current utility lines look like, Precourt passed around several photos of the public works crew replacing portions of sewer lines that were basically disintegrating.
As a result, replacing sewer and water lines in Snow Lake will be a major undertaking, which will cost millions of dollars over the coming decades.
Precourt said that while the past number of years has put the focus on the water and sewer plants, that will now switch over to lift stations and utility piping.
He said the sewage plant construction is close to being completed, and once environmental permitting is in place, the town will be able to add more lots as well as lever some financing for land development.
Referring again to the three areas that were earmarked in 2009, Precourt said that they are all still priorities in 2013.
He noted the preliminary clearing that was done on several of the locations, but there were problems with mining claims on the area west of Cedar and Lakeshore. As a result, the focus will be on the other two.
Actually, the town just closed a RFP (Request for Proposals) for engineering and concepts on what they can do development-wise on the three land masses.
“So we are looking at a half-dozen proposals,” Precourt said. “We’re hoping we’ll have the engineering services develop these three areas in 2014 and hopefully looking at construction after that.”
Also mentioned in the presentation was the town’s focus on Snow Lake’s airport.
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Mentioning a recent airport study the town conducted (with the financial help of Hudbay), Precourt said that after it concluded, council realized the airport was insufficient even for the bare minimum of service.
Noting that the town’s priority for the airport is medevac flights, the municipality has spent $200,000 over the past two years upgrading the runway to a useable state.
At this point, the town still doesn’t have a permanent source of power at the strip and are running lights on a generator. This continues as a concern, but one that the town hopes to remedy in the future at a cost of about $350,000, in addition to the cost of clearing and other incidentals.
As for economic development, Precourt says the town has been trying to work on a number of items within that realm.
“Definitely our priorities have been on items such as attracting a pharmacy to Snow Lake,” he said. “We have been talking to people about new radio stations, improved MTS service, and of course we have been talking with a bunch of different companies, Multicrete being one of them, but Gardewine and BacTech are three companies that we have had discussions with. I can guarantee we will be inking a deal with Multicrete for sure where they are located currently.”
As for a pharmacy and improved MTS service, or 4G, Precourt feels certain that the town is going to be able to make both a reality in 2014.
On the topic of business incentives, Precourt says this is an issue that council has been talking a lot about.
“There is an unbelievable amount of council discussion about business incentives, right now,” he noted. “The one the finance committee and council have talked a lot about is for current commercial property owners and would see them receive a cash grant of $250 for every $500 they spend up to $5,000 on exterior building projects.”
It isn’t approved yet, but Precourt says the council is kicking this idea around. They have sent it to the chamber to see if it is a program they can get on board with.
Noting changes in Snow Lake, such as the establishment of the Chamber of Commerce, Precourt said he hopes the relationship between the town and businesses improves.
Precourt said council puts a lot of effort into securing public and business opinion on their budgets.
He pointed to the pre-budget satisfaction survey and pre-budget afternoon and evening hours consultation meeting in mid-December.
Precourt’s final topic was the municipal election of 2014.
“I always thought that business owners make a good fit for council,” said Precourt. “So it is something I would urge you to consider if that is something that you’re interested in.”
He said “running the town is like running a business, and most are successful when they have people on them with business aptitude.”
My Take on Snow Lake runs Fridays.
Town of Snow Lake CAO Jeff Precourt showing Chamber luncheon attendees the location of the town’s proposed lot developments.
PHOTO BY MARC JACKSON
