As the Town of Innisfail holds the line on taxes in 2018 and gets set to take on a manageable list of capital projects centering on maintaining infrastructure, they are looking to potentially bigger projects in the future.

Council and Administration are currently into a two day strategic planning session as they make plans for facility priorities over the next 5 years.

Mayor Jim Romane says a key piece of that will be communicating that Innisfail is open for business.

“Encouraging developers as much as we can to take a look at Innisfail and get some more land and lots available to market, we’re at a bit of a shortfall there so we’re encouraging developers to look at Innisfail for potential for development”.

Romane says they do have some larger developers with land in Innisfail, and they will also be encouraging them to get back into the market again after a bit of a slump the last couple of years.

The new Mayor says the municipality is in a good financial position; they have a substantial reserve and virtually no debt to service, which opens the door to do some forward thinking as they look to address very little growth, population wise, in the community in recent years.

“What we think we are missing the boat on is the appeal to younger families.  Our demographics that we’ve been looking at have indicated an average, older demographic in Innisfail, so we’re trying to change that.  We can’t change that without getting new families, young families to reconsider living in Innisfail, and maybe we need to put in some facilities to entice them”.