Publisher’s Note: We wrote the following column a day before Lac La Biche County council decided they could afFORD to say OK to spend $5 million to turn the former Lac La Biche Ford dealership (originally OK Ford) into a new protective services unit.
... here’s the original column we put on our website last Monday. It got some good reviews. We’ve added a final paragraph this week to update it.
OK, it would be great to have a new fire hall and a central location to house emergency services vehicles, staff and equipment. OK, it would give our emergency services quite an Edge on disaster prevention. And OK, it might seem like a simple plan to at least Probe the idea of moving into a large building instead of Fording through new construction planning and headaches. But perhaps council has been looking more at the celebration Fiesta of moving into a pretty building rather than Focusing on the lost opportunity it would mean for potential new economic development.
Council should be Mavericks and do something out-of-this world, maybe out of this Galaxie to draw new business to the community instead of swooping in like a Raptor or a Falcon on a wounded target.
Perhaps they could buy the building at a reduced rate, then go on a mission to find the right buyer — like elite army Rangers seeking out targets — and offer potential buyers some Fusion of a deal combining incentives and much-needed tax dollars to draw in a more suited business for the building.
This idea would be a model for other developers to build the economy back up. It could be Model A ... and for each new idea, we could run the alphabet all the way to Model T if we had to.
For example, perhaps council could Escort a local developer to a potential retailer who would like the building, and then Flex some municipal muscles with the commercial realty office that has been trying to sell the property for the last three years to reduce the sale price of the building. We bet the realty holding company would be willing to Escape the debt of carrying the building.
If our business and community leaders were to draw some new Contours around the issue, great ideas might fall towards them like a Meteor shower.
OK, so it would take some work, and OK, it might be a long-play — a bit of an Expedition — but it’s better than jumping into the ring like a bucking Bronco and perhaps making things Five Hundred-times worse than they are. Looking for a better fit for the building could be an Excursion worth taking to help draw more commercial business (and the customer traffic it can create) to the community.
Cheeky add-on: But we also have to remembers that no matter what council decides, they are elected to act in the best interests of their residents who they have a Super Duty to represent.
We know we’re only a newspaper and we’d never insist that council Mustang on our every word, so it wasn’t a shock when they went Freestyle last Tuesday and voted to go ahead with the plan.
We just hope the decision doesn’t blow up in their face ... like a Pinto.