CBRM seeks new approach to economic development planning
The Cape Breton Regional Municipality hopes to take a new approach with its economic development plan by issuing requests for proposals.
“That’s what we want to do — to put a RFP out there and anyone can bid on it,” said John Phalen, manager of economic development and major projects with the CBRM.
However, Phalen said the Department of Municipal Affairs has specifics within the process they want in place in order to provide funding.
The CBRM puts money into economic development every year and traditionally the province has matched it.
“They have a process we need to follow first,” he said.
Phalen said they will be meeting with the province in about two weeks to gather specifics they need to follow to determine terms of reference for requests for proposals.
“We are ironing out this process with Municipal Affairs and once we have that we will proceed with terms of reference,” he said.
Phalen said any groups — Business Cape Breton, the Cape Breton Partnership, the two groups together or other groups— can submit a proposal as to how the CBRM will proceed with its economic development plan for the coming year.
“That’s the way council wanted it done,” he said. “They wanted us to go outside, which we have done for the last number of years but it was solely Business Cape Breton that was doing it for us.”
Phalen said CBRM staff came up with the new approach and terms of reference of what they want to get done in economic development for the year.
“It will be specific and it will be laid out exactly, what tasks and deliverables we’ll be looking for,” he said.
“We’ll put that out and we’ll get proposals from interested parties and we will evaluate that and bring it to council. Council will make the ultimate decision.”
Phalen said the Cape Breton Partnership did not receive municipal funding this year but has made proposals to do work for council. In September 2017, the Cape Breton Partnership asked the CBRM to invest in the publicprivately funded economic development group which services the island.
The proposal asked for $50,000 in funding and an additional $100,000 from the municipality’s 2018-19 budget, to help fund projects that would be of benefit to the local area and the island as a whole.
The proposal was one of many turned down during CBRM budget deliberations.
Carla Arsenault, chief operating officer for the Cape Breton Partnership, said they continue to work with the CBRM on a number of initiatives including most recently the Smart Cities Roundtable and the Export Growth Service.
“We look forward to reviewing the request for proposals and seeing what further role the Partnership can play in economic development with the CBRM,” Arsenault said. BCB received about $400,000 in funding this year which ended March 31. According to information on its website, BCB assisted 134 clients in new business development from April 1, 2013 to April 30, 2017 and provided 2,717 business services. BCB also supported projects across the CBRM including the Glace Bay and area revitalization, Indian Beach and Munro Park. BCB did not return calls from the Post. Dist. 9 hopes Coun. they George can MacDonald get through this process quickly. “The faster the process is completed the better for the CBRM. Hopefully the process will be completed by the end of April as there are projects going forward and we are just trying to finalize them.”