MAYBVM

220 221 those industries –one that makes lighting signs with tritium from the nuclear laboratory, and one that makes bomb suits for the military.” Pembroke also serves as service hub for the area, which has a daily population of about 74,000. “Those are people who live within a 45-minute drive from Pembroke,who are com- ing here to do their grocery shopping, to see their doctor, to drop their kids off at school and daycare –those sorts of things,”Salovaara adds. Finally, the local economy also benefits from tourism, aided partly by Pembroke’s location on the Trans-Canada Highway, as well as being a gateway to the Ottawa Valley’s natural, cultural, and recreational areas, such as Algonquin Park, a 2,946-square-mile expanse of forest, rivers, lakes, and wildlife. Today, Pembroke is focused on its economic de- velopment–a priority that the City Council speci- fied in its most recent strategic plan.To accomplish that,without raising taxes on its residents,Mayor Mike LeMay says that the city needs to broaden its assessment base.“To do that,we have to get manu- facturing in; we have to improve the businesses in town; we have to make sure the businesses we do have, stay. So,what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years is just developing tools and pro- grams to put into place.” Salovaara details some of the programs that have been promulgated to encourage investment in the city.“One of the first ones that Council undertook was our Community Improvement Plan,” she begins. “We put ours in place in September 2016.We have ten grants under our plan; they’re designed, pri- marily, to help commercial and industrial property owners.And we do have one grant for residential property owners of upper-story units in our down- PEMBROKE, ONTARIO town corridor.The majority of the grants that we’ve seen taken advantage of are for façade improvement–the brickwork or the lighting or the signage on the exterior of a property. “The Downtown Housing Grant is another one–to encourage landlords in our downtown to improve the residential spaces they have to attract people to live downtown, because we knowwhen peo- ple live downtown, it looks nicer, and you see more customers down there,which attracts even more commercial tenants. “We do have eight other grants, as well–some small, some very large, that can reduce the taxes that a business pays over a ten-year period.Our Council initially allocated $100,000 to roll out to property owners in the city.At the begin- ning of this year,we had about $24,000 left and Council topped that off by anoth- er $50,000. So, they definitely invested a good amount of dollars in the program. “We did a review in December 2017, and found that we had a 473 percent return on investments; so, basically, for every dollar we’re giving out,we’re seeing $4.73 invested in our community.This year, for our 2018 budget, Council re- duced the industrial property tax rate by 22 percent. So,we’re trying to make our- selves more competitive to bring industry to the area.” Helping Pembroke to attract industry has been aided by its recent certifica- tion by the Province of Ontario as an “investment-ready certified site,” based on all the preparation it has done to