Business View City & Municipal | August 2022

36 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7 key thing for me is that we’ve got to continue to diversify the economy. There is a huge amount of economic activity that’s flourishing here and we’re a well-diversified region. It’s a great community for raising a young family. Unemployment is not a problem here. There are tremendous opportunities.” Woodstock is located where the Trans-Canada Highway meets Interstate 95 leading to Houlton, Maine. It’s also about 100 kilometers from the New Brunswick capital city of Fredericton. It boasts easy access to universities and colleges including New Brunswick Community College (NBCC), which has a campus in the town, The University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University in Fredericton, and access to universities in Maine. Woodstock also has two newly constructed elementary schools and a renovated high school. NBCC has been successfully recruiting record numbers of international students who often bring their families to the town while they study. Slipp reports, “They often end up staying and settling in the town. We are working very, very strongly with the province and with our local multicultural association on the immigrant population and providing services to those. So, that has been a recent focus that has paid big dividends.” Like most municipalities, the lack of housing stock is a concern in Woodstock, but they’ve recently completed a housing study to identify residents’ needs. The study showed high-end housing is doing fine, but affordable housing is a problem. According to Slipp, “We’ve been trying to work with different government programs to get developers to look at affordable housing and that’s always a challenge, but we’re having no problem with multi-residential construction and were having no problem with new commercial developments in the retail sector.” Amy Anderson, Deputy Mayor of Woodstock, says they have also overhauled their development