Banff Mayor Karen Sorensen and Leslie Bruce from Banff & Lake Louise Tourism joined me on the show this morning to talk about the goals and early strategies of the new Banff & Lake Louise Economic Task Force and what people should know ahead of the May Long Weekend.

 

Rob: Leslie, what is the Banff and Lake Louise Economic Task Force and what’s the general purpose here?

Leslie: We’re focused on a safe reopening of the destination, first and foremost, welcoming people back in a way that really helps the community, our frontline staff, and our visitors stay safe. We’re also really looking forward to testing some of our new sustainable tourism ideas and using this as a platform to really build a healthy reentry into tourism coming back to national park.

Rob: Mayor Sorenson, Banff is part of the stage one economic reopening. Businesses do have the option of reopening in some capacity now. Is this the time for visitors to be coming to Banff?

Karen: We are sending the message that we look forward to welcoming you back when it is safe to do so. We’re heading into the May Long Weekend and I would say that Banff is not ready for visitors to return. We’re all working together as a community to be able to welcome visitors again, just not quite yet. We have suspended the check stops at the entrance to the Town of Banff, but we’re going to be monitoring the traffic volume and we may need to implement educational stops if we see that the traffic volume is too high.

To Leslie’s point, we’re also going to trial closing a lane each way on Banff Avenue to give more room for pedestrians to keep two meters apart at all time. And just a reminder to listeners that Banff National Park services are closed until at least May 31st. Banff is trying to stay in line with them in terms of the destination as a whole, opening up more freely at that time.

Rob: Parks Canada just announcing that there will be a partial reopening on June 1st of some services in the national parks. Does June 1st align with the town of Banff and what you think you’ll be ready for?

Karen: That’s what we’re working on. We’re working very hard right now on implementing measures in public spaces to enable safety protocols that will be required by Alberta Health, such as physical distancing. It’s going to be very important that we do those things to avoid crowding as people queue up for retail stores or restaurants. Also, businesses need time to hire and train staff and put in place health and safety measures. Alberta remains in a state of emergency. This virus is still here and it is imperative that we not undo all, frankly, of what I consider a great success to stop the spread of COVID in our community. We have to guard against an outbreak and Banff for the health of everyone.

Leslie: The business community is very committed to reopening in a safe way, and so this time to really prepare is really critical for that safe reopening. It’s the strong desire to reopen and to be able to remain open. We’re not interested in a false start and very, very committed to doing this in a way that really protects our reputation in the long term.

Rob: It’s no secret that Banff has been particularly hard hit by the downturn with COVID-19. Conversations you’ve had with people in the business community – is there hope? Is there despair? I mean, what’s the general feeling right now?

Leslie: I think that entire range of emotions is prevalent and probably all in the same day at certain points. There is no doubt the business community has been hard hit and it takes an emotional toll as it relates to people caring for their staff and ensuring that they’re also able to support themselves through this, what we’re calling, hibernation period. That said, there is hope and hope continues to build as we get closer to that reopening of services and the resumption of services in the National Park. And I think it’s a very resilient community and a community that strongly supports one another. If you go back to when things were shut down, this community rallied. We’ve been really coming at this from a people first perspective and I’ve been so impressed and so inspired by what the community and the business community have done for one another to get through this. You can just go to our website and have a look on a daily basis, the kind of incredible things that people are doing for one another to make sure that we come out the other side of this together.

Karen: The many, many, many conversations I’ve had with residents over the past eight weeks is one of gratitude for the steps that the Town and Parks Canada and industry with Banff Lake Louise Tourism have taken. I think that our residents feel safe, and I know that there is big support out there for this phased-in approach. We know that many businesses in Banff have the opportunity to open to some degree are not opening, and that this idea that we will all phase in together once we know that everybody is safe and that our visitors will be safe seems to be a community-wide direction that they want us to take. And just to reiterate Leslie’s comment, it is always in times of crisis where this community comes together, although this has been a very different situation. This has not been a flood or a fire season that has a start and an end. We just don’t know. There’s been a lot of support for each other and empathy for those of us making decisions with what we’ve done to date.

Rob: Leslie, you previously mentioned like some innovative ideas that the task force is looking at. Can you maybe go into that a little bit?

Leslie:  We’re very excited about testing more pedestrian spaces and public spaces, and that includes what Karen was talking about with Banff Avenue. This is something that we believe will not only increase the safety of people in town, but it also offers us a new experience and a chance to see what that feels like. We’re very excited about some of the ideas that are cropping up and some of the things that we’re seeing happen in terms of the ability to cycle in different places, and of course my team is starting to look at how technology can be used in different ways to help support that visitor experience to ensure that people have the information they need to plan accordingly. Some of those ideas are certainly on the table and many more that I’ll look forward to sharing more detail as we start to get closer to testing them.

Rob:  The municipality as well tried to provide some help. I mean, a 17% tax reduction over 2019 levels. That’s a pretty impressive number, Mayor Sorensen.

Karen: Thank you very much. Those were big discussions, time-consuming meetings. It was a mixture of looking at what revenues we were going to be down because of the pandemic, what costs were going to go up, and where the town would reduce services because they really weren’t going to be needed to the same degree, in order to save money. The big amount was we normally would transfer a significant amount of money to our capital reserves on an annual basis, which has put us in an incredibly healthy place financially. For 2020, we reduced the amount we intended to put in by a couple of million dollars, and that is what was able to get us to that minus 17% so for commercial and residential. The taxes will be 17% lower than they were in 2019.

Filed under: Banff, covid-19