Members of the Lloydminster Chamber of Commerce are rating economic development as the highest priority when it comes to issues affecting business.
The Chamber released their policy resolutions on Tuesday, outlining the business communities focus for 2018, which includes creating an economic development strategy to help businesses in the City grow. Executive Director Serena Sjodin says a new strategy is needed after Lloydminster cut the Economic Development Corp. last summer.
“Economic development was a standalone entity at arms length from City Hall. It was funded by City Hall though. So when the City was doing up their annual budgeting they were facing a pretty big deficit and part of counteracting that deficit was to look for cost cutting.”
The Chamber has offered the City several recommendations to address the dissolution of the corporation, including creating a strategic plan, building an advisory committee with community stakeholders and diversification. Sjodin says that the City is currently looking for a new economic development officer, but plans to keep pushing the policy forward.
“We kept going ahead with this policy resolution though to back the importance of having an economic development officer within our City and showing the business communities support of having economic development.”
The Chamber is looking to work with the City by sitting on a stakeholder committee with the economic development officer in order to give feedback from businesses in the community.