Rossland city council has approved a motion from Mayor Kathy Moore to create a new local economic development task force.
While the city had a similar task force in 2009, it was later disbanded due to lack of interest from council at the time.
Moore said a couple things have to occur before the task force begins to operate at the start of 2021.
“We’ll need to review the terms of reference that were set up to establish the original task force and see we if want to change any of those,” said Moore.
“Then, we’re going to advertise in the press to get people to submit their application and volunteer for the task force. Council will look over the people that stepped forward, pick them and then we’ll be off to the races.”
The task force would be managed by the city’s Sustainability Commission and would be given a budget of $2,500 to operate in 2021.
Task force members would have a certain kind of entrepreneur in mind that they’d like to bring to the city.
“Members would try and attract new business into town, particularly the high-tech or nomadic entrepreneur kind of group,” said Moore.
“We don’t have a lot of commercial or industrial space. When people come to this town, it’s important that people bring their jobs with them. Since our bandwidth is better than it used to be, it’s much for feasible for people to work from home.”
According to a 2019 annual report, the city grew almost 14 per cent between 2006 and 2016 to 3,729 people.
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