Business View City & Municipal | August 2022

38 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7 The town also boasts 5G internet access and a significant complement of recreation facilities that include the only indoor community pool in a more than 100 km radius, an indoor walking track, gym, and much more. The town also offers many outdoor sports fields with high vision lighting. The recreation center also employs solar panels as part of their efforts to use less energy and counteract climate change. Anderson says, “The town has been working on a climate change resiliency plan and adapting other plans that include looking at what the vulnerabilities of our infrastructure may be in the face of extreme weather, of forest fires… you know there’s all types of things that are increasing now due to climate change.” On the sustainability front, they’ve added back- up power to the town’s well field water source and are looking to find where redundancies need to be in place to ensure the community never runs out of water. The town has a few different locations sporting chargers for electric vehicles, including two at NBCC, although electric vehicles haven’t grown as popular yet as they have in some other communities. Looking ahead, Slipp believes, “The future is very, very bright. The economy is vibrant here and we’ve diversified. Most of our businesses are owned by longstanding families in the community and they have taken care of their transition to the next generation of ownership within the family. The succession plans are strong and the prosperity here is local families investing in local businesses.” Anderson is looking forward to the potential of developing an active transportation plan and thinks “that’s really going to draw younger residents and it’s something that people are appreciating now especially with the pandemic… the ability to be outside and to have the outdoor recreation. Also to really see what the next phase of downtown revitalization is going to look like. Just making it a more vibrant and exciting place for people to live in.” PREFERRED VENDOR/ PARTNER n Home Zone Electronics www.hze.ca