have a Food Basics that’s just going through site planning right now and hoping to see them break ground in late 2025 or early 2026,”Valentyne reports. She emphasizes the town’s focus on business retention alongside attraction. “We have some key industrial businesses that are actively growing, expanding, bringing on new employees, looking to new divisions, and that’s something that we’ve really made a priority of supporting as well.” GREEN INITIATIVES AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE Prescott positioned itself ahead of the curve on environmental initiatives, installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure before many larger municipalities.The town applied for federal funding through Natural Resources Canada to install 12 to 13 charging stations throughout the community three years ago. “We were a little bit ahead of the curve when it came to electric car charging,”Armstrong says.“For the first couple of years it was free of charge so to speak, or free to charge.And so, I think that put us on the map.” Private developers have followed suit, with a recently renovated gas station adding fast chargers and the upcoming Food Basics grocery store planning EV infrastructure. The town’s environmental efforts also cover a complete conversion to LED street lighting to reduce energy consumption while improving visibility. “A few years ago, again, being ahead of the curve, we switched all our street lighting to LED lighting,” Mayor Shankar notes. “So that was a big environmentally charged program.” Climate adaptation measures address the riverside community’s vulnerability to flooding. Armstrong outlines comprehensive protection strategies. “We are working on about a half a million dollar project to really fortify our water treatment plant from flood mitigation,” he says.“Over the last several years we’ve also done shoreline fortification so that as the rivers rise, more frequent or violent storms, things like that, that we’re not losing that shoreline.” Prescott also earned Bicycle Friendly Community designation from Share the Road Cycling Coalition, installing bicycle repair stations and dedicated infrastructure downtown. The town piloted a subsidized countertop composter program, providing hundred-dollar rebates to over a hundred homeowners. “We’ve been trying to do it in a multifaceted approach where we’re reacting to climate change, we’re trying to provide incentives for people to really change the way that they do things,” Armstrong explains. 7 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 07 PRESCOTT, ON
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