Mayor making strides towards bringing growth to Strathmore
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
Mayor Steve Grajczyk and Councillor Dave Hamilton were in Fort McMurray May 10-12 for a summit on energy.
Grajczyk said it was very educational.
“For one thing, I would say to anybody that is unfamiliar, and this is aside from my political view point … anybody that is unfamiliar with the so called pollution that is happening up there, go up to visit Fort Mac to see that it is not the oil sands causing the pollution, a lot of it is a natural thing that it is happening,” said Grajczyk.
He said it’s a beautiful city that has positive growth and a lot of assets behind them. They have a recreational sports complex, which is worth $176 million, to serve the 83,000 people there.
“The course itself, there were a lot of speakers from various oil companies, that I had a conversation with,” said Grajczyk.
The first day of the tour consisted of them going through the oil sands and the Syncrude Plant just north of the city. Hamilton and Grajczyk had an opportunity to met Don Thompson, president of the Oil sands Developers Group. They also had a chance to meet Ron Liepert, the Minister of Energy and Ron Renner, the Minister of Environment. The next few days they attended a small trade fair and met a variety of people involved with the oil industry. Both Grajczyk and Hamilton hope through their new contact, there will be a benefit to Strathmore.
Grajczyk has been quite busy over the last few weeks, heading to Kansas City shortly after going to Fort McMurray.
“I just got back from Kansas City at a Futurallia Convention where Dwight (Stanford, Chief Administrative Officer for the town) and I combined – probably met over 50 different potential people who could become partly investors or clients who would be interested in coming to Strathmore,” said Grajczyk.
He said one of the more interesting people he met is a company that can handle bio waste products in Strathmore, in a much more reasonable manner than they do now. They also talked to a company that wants to build grain bins in Strathmore and oil retention reservoirs.
“I was just overwhelmed by the interest and enthusiasm from all the people across North America, and overseas,” said Grajczyk.
“This all has to be followed up on and it takes some time. I want people to know this all takes a lot of ground work after the conventions.”
He met the mayor of Kansas City and he said they talked and found there are a lot of things in common with the issues of running a town or city.
Sweeping change
While Grajczyk was away, there was a major concern with the sweeping of the streets in Strathmore.
“In regards to the street sweeper … that was a contract that I thought would work, it didn’t work, but hopefully we’ve adjusted to the fact that it’ll work now. I want to make sure people know that I make decisions that are best for the people and that one didn’t work out. Decisions are based on the information that we were given and all the information wasn’t given to us,” said Grajczyk.
There was no drop dead start up date in the contract which he said there should have been.