Saint John Adopts New Plan for “Smart Growth”
SAINT JOHN – The City of Saint John wants to put itself on the road to smarter growth with its new plan.
On Monday night the city’s common council approved a new plan called The Roadmap to Smart Growth. The plan aims to streamline the city’s approach to economic development by focusing on three key areas of growth: population, employment and tax base.
“Someone asked ‘what is different about this plan?’ And I think what’s different about this road map for me is it’s not too thick, too broad, it’s very focused. It’s not 50 strategies, it’s very focused in on six key strategies with the three key pillars. It’s heavily weighted on action … We’re going to measure very vigorously and hold ourselves accountable and our partners accountable,” said Saint John Mayor Don Darling at a media briefing on Tuesday.
“I think it gives citizens exactly what they asked for. They told us loud and clear that’s what they wanted.”
[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”250″ size=”13″ bg_color=”#e8e8e8″ txt_color=”#232323″]Read the city’s new plan in full here. [/mks_pullquote]
The plan, which was the result of the city’s Growth Committee established last year, uses six strategies to help grow population, employment and the tax base:
- Aggressively facilitating the development and sale of key municipal-owned properties
- Further enticing the development community to pursue large-scale development projects
- Discouraging landowners of vacant and dangerous properties from continued inaction
- Dramatically improving the marketability of Saint John to visitors, investors, students, business and newcomers
- Introducing enhanced collaboration and strategic focus to existing economic development governance structure
- Focusing priority development in Saint John’s urban core
The plan outlines 45 specific actions, each with a deadline for completion and assigned agency or partners tasked to it. The city will be working with several local community and economic development agencies such Enterprise Saint John and the Human Development Council. Darling said all agencies involved will be given a mandate letter next month that will clearly outline what role they play within the plan.
“We’re entering a very collaborative working relationships with folks where we’re trying to clarify through a mandate letter,” he said. “Mandate letters sound very stern, but we’re working and collaborating with folks.”
Darling says the city will be taking the targets the agencies are to meet seriously.
“The consequence is this council will have to decide ‘is population growth important to us?’ And if it is and we’re working, hypothetically, with an agency that isn’t able to deliver that, I can tell you this person’s opinion would be that we would go and find another mechanism to deliver on that,” he says.
“Population growth isn’t optional anymore, or tax base growth or jobs growth. So if we’re working with a group or agency and we have a barrier or roadblock, I expect to remove it.”
Darling said the plan is a “living document” that is subject to changes, but timelines for results should remain aggressive.
“It’s aggressive and it’s matched with what the committee and ultimately council thought was important, to take aggressive actions. If we’re going to fall short and we’d pull back only after some pretty direct and candid discussion in internally,” Darling sais. “But we do have to support our professional staff as well. But we adopted this roadmap with their feedback. They certainly believe it’s aggressive and today our focus is on getting results and actioning those items.”