CCDA, city council liaison say new mandate needed

By COLLIN GALLANT on January 6, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Both the head of the City Centre Development Agency and city council’s liaison with the business improvement district say a new mandate for the organization is needed and perhaps a more solid line drawn between it and city hall.

CCDA chair Jeremy Silver, however, says the city can’t have it both ways considering a growing controversy over the group’s new budget and confusion among downtown business owners.

“There’s been a lot of feedback and it’s not positive,” said Silver on Tuesday.

The document deletes $100,000 from the city that previously went toward a grant program for leasehold improvements and general street beautification.

It gives funds to the newly formed Invest MH office at city hall and earmarks them for its own Riverfront Development plan, which includes portions of the downtown.

Silver said the CCDA board didn’t see a final draft of its own budget that was changed substantially and then forwarded to council for approval.

Coun. Kris Samraj represents council on the board, and said CCDA ratepayers should take the opportunity to redefine their organization.

“How that was communicated was definitely a mistake,” said Samraj. “We’ll fix that by taking two weeks (before the public hearing on Jan. 18).”

Silver said to this point downtown business owners are out of the loop and it’s not clear to him how much control or influence Invest MH would have in downtown matters.

He felt that given a choice, stakeholders would side with more autonomy.

“The stakeholders have a right to be upset, and are asking,

“‘Why is the city taking its money out of the downtown, then having Invest micromanage it?'” he said.

Two years ago, council signalled that it would reconsider the $100,000 annual payment that paid for a CCDA-administered grant program and for street maintenance, hanging baskets and general beautification efforts.

Samraj says the grant also left an impression as a major contributor to the CCDA’s budget, the city had or should have a greater hand in guiding the agency that’s mostly paid for and legally governed by ratepayers.

“There are some structural things that we need to change and this budget accomplishes that,” Samraj told reporters on Monday.

“There’s a conception that city council is somehow controlling of the Business Improvement Area, and there’s probably some truth to that, which is one thing to untangle,” he said.

“But BIA’s should have very little to do with council… it works well elsewhere and there’s space to decide whose responsibilities are what.”

Monarch loan

Another major change in the budget, which is passed by council because it collects the levy in zone that exists under provincial legislation, is that the city would forgive the remaining $60,000 of the interest-free loan given for the purchase of the Monarch Theatre in 2010.

That deletes an annual payment of $20,000 from the CCDA budget.

The 2021 document also shows a near $30,000 reduction in annual requisition that is collected as a levy on business operators in the district.

A separate city contract to perform beautification work was increased from about $11,000 to $55,000.

Silver said the end result is $47,000 less in the budget.

Reduced expenses show the end of leasehold improvement grant program, totalling $25,000 in the 2020 budget, and reduced amounts for events and partnerships.

For 2020, the CCDA expected a $20,137 shortfall, including the Monarch loan payment. The 2021 budget expects a balanced budget worth $178,000, about $75,000 less than last year’s expected actuals.

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