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District holds public meeting to brainstorm for Smart Cities Challenge

The District of Barriere held a public information meeting last Monday evening to gather ideas and suggestions from area residents and government regarding applying for a Smart Cities Challenge grant. The Smart Cities Challenge is a competitive funding initiative of Infrastructure Canada. It is open to all municipalities, local or regional governments, and Indigenous communities (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) across Canada.
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The District of Barriere held a public information meeting last Monday evening to gather ideas and suggestions from area residents and government regarding applying for a Smart Cities Challenge grant. The Smart Cities Challenge is a competitive funding initiative of Infrastructure Canada. It is open to all municipalities, local or regional governments, and Indigenous communities (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) across Canada.

The deadline for community proposals is April 24, 2018, with finalists being announced in the summer, and winners announced the following spring of 2019. Finalists will receive support, along with $250,000, to develop their final smart cities proposal. Winning communities in the following categories will be awarded with prize money to help implement them.

· One prize of up to $50 million - Open to all communities, regardless of population;

· Two prizes of up to $10 million each - Open to all communities with populations under 500,000;

· One prize of up to $5 million - Open to all communities with populations under 30,000

Approximately 18 people attended the meeting, including District of Barriere Mayor Virginia Smith, councilors Pat Paula, Mike Fennell and Ward Stamer. Thompson Nicola Regional District Area O director Bill Kershaw was also in attendance, as well as representatives of the Lower North Thompson Community Forest Society, the North Thompson Museum and Heritage Society, Barriere Recreation Society, North Thompson Communities Foundation, North Thompson Fall Fair and Rodeo Association, Barriere Fire Department, First Responders and Search and Rescue, Barriere Seniors Society, and more.

The meeting was chaired by District of Barriere CAO Colleen Hannigan. Hannigan gave a brief overview of Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge, and commented that herself and Councilor Kibble had spent some time watch a video on the subject and what the grant process requires to help communities be successful with their application.

The following statements are taken from the Infrastructure Canada website (https://impact.canada. ca/en/challenges/ smart-cities/applicant- guide), where more detailed information regarding the program is available:

“A smart cities approach aims to achieve meaningful outcomes for residents by leveraging the fundamental benefits that data and connected technology have to offer. This approach can be adopted by any community, big or small. Because the Smart Cities Challenge is all about achieving outcomes, it will be vital for communities to measure where they are starting from, when they are making progress, and when they have achieved success. Establishing a baseline and measuring results will be central to doing this. Communities should take risks and think big, identify significant, pressing, and perceived “unsolvable” problems, and achieve outcomes through data and connected technology. Communities will need to undertake meaningful engagement with residents and forge relationships with new and non-traditional partners. Smart cities approaches should not only benefit a single community; they should be scalable and replicable across Canada.”

Hannigan emphasized that utilizing technology is a big part of the grant, which has five focuses to be considered, and that applicants can only pick two of the five to focus their project on. The five areas of focus are: economic opportunity, empowerment and inclusion, environmental quality, safety and security, and healthy living and recreation. She noted that this years grant offerings will be repeated again in 2019 and 2020 as well.

After some discussion about the focus of the grant process and what would be required to submit an application Hannigan asked if anyone attending had a project that they felt would fit the requirements and benefit the community.

Barriere resident Franz Friesinger made a presentation in regards to a gated retirement community project he would like to see in Barriere. Friesinger noted that his project was actually a $100 million dollar project but was hoping that the District of Barriere would take on the project and make application to the Smart Cities Challenge for the $50 million grant being offered.

Friesinger gave an in depth overview of the project, noting he has already found the property for it which is situated between the Yellowhead Highway and Dunn Lake Road just to the north of Barriere Town Road. In answering questions from those attending the meeting Friesinger stated that the project would provide meals, transportation, recreation, medical care, and even palliative care to it’s residents on a monthly cost basis as well as the initial purchase of the home, although some may be renters.

Friesinger also stated that he would like to see the District of Barriere take on the project and a good start would be the possibility of accessing the Smart Cities Grant.

Councilor Mike Fennell pointed out that the District council could not take on a project of this sort as project funding would have to come from taxes, and the citizens of Barriere would not be very happy about that.

Brian Bondar was next to make a presentation in regards to the North Thompson Interpretive Centre that he has been championing over the past few months. The center would have a museum, wildlife interpretive displays, a Simpcw First Nation display, a video theatre, meeting rooms and offices. He would like the center to be situated on the highway in Barriere to draw maximum tourist visits which his projections show would pay to sustain the building.

Mayor Smith suggested that the HY Louis building (old IGA Store) on Barriere Town Road could make a very good Interpretive Center and the District of Barriere could then have office on the second floor. Bill Kershaw agreed with the idea and said the downtown core of Barriere must be revitalized and the Interpretive Center would be a good way to draw traffic off the highway and into the community.

Councilor Ward Stamer noted it would be good to see some of the unused land in the heart of the community turned into affordable housing.

Gordon Manson suggested improvements to cell service and Internet in the area, and the implementation of solar power. Solar power was a popular item as was improvements to wifi, cell service and transportation.

It was also suggested that making Barriere a sustainable community in times of disaster, including power outages, floods, wildfires and loss of transportation should be considered. Also food sustainability by utilizing what we already have such as the wastewater treatment facility for water, etc. Transportation needs be addressed, medical care and more.

Discussion then took place regarding the various projects and ideas. It was finally agreed that everyone would think about the ideas as discussed and other projects that may not have been brought up over the next few weeks as time was short to come up with a project acceptable for the community.

It was decided on Monday, March 12, at 6:30 p.m. in the multi purpose room at the Ridge building for the next meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend.