District of Wells develops blueprint moving forward

The District of Wells has released a concise business plan that goes over the community’s future plans.

Newly elected Mayor Ed Coleman says it is a 52-page document.

Here, he goes over a couple of the highlights.

“We’ve assessed our sewer systems, so that’s going need about a 6 million dollar investment.  We’re putting together everything we need around that and we’ll work with federal and provincial partners, and then the community as a whole.   Our facilities, we’ll take a more fine tuned look at our facilities so we can figure out the priorities for the different buildings.”

Coleman says revitalizing the community hall and the fire hall are also on the list, as well as to increase housing in the area.

He says the business plan is a working document with moving parts.

“It will get updated weekly as we continue to work with the document, and then it will slow down and maybe get updated monthly.  But what it does is it’s a transfer songbook for everybody to look at, the community and our partners, so they can pretty well understand where we’re at and what the focus is, and where we’re at with our buildings and infrastructure in the community, long term and short term.”

In terms of paying for projects, Coleman says the District’s Community Forest is beginning to pay some dividends.

“Some of that could be applied to some of this work, and that’s sustainable input that comes from all of that hard work to get a community forest, and then just the overall partnerships with industry over time that we will engages in.   So we’ll stat to pull together some of those investments, and then as most municipalities you work with federal and provincial government on specific initiatives for your community as well.”

Coleman says they have a great industry partner in Osisko Development.

“What we’re doing there right away is we worked on an MOU, a Memoradum of Understanding, which is a one page document on how we’ll do business together.  And then subsequent to that we will begin to work on an agreement and that will identify mutual projects between the District of Wells and the mine.

Coleman says the company has already stated that they would put 512 thousand dollars into the community centre, which is where the school is hosted as an example.

He says there are different investments that make sense to them to attract good employees to their project, and he says you look for those mutual items and then negotiate on how that could look.

The District’s complete business plan is now available on its website.