Below is the information Gathered From the February 25th Smart Cities Public Consultation.
1. What does "Best Small Town in Canada” mean to you?
- Vibrant life
- Ability to live life to the fullest
- Facilities compliment a comfortable life
- Facilities include transportation, stores, services, recreation, etc.
- Sense of who we are as a community
- Inclusive and open
- Housing transportation & mobility
- Divergently to future?
- Amenities and services
- Retail, auto dealers, etc. (3 dealerships repeated)
- Need to welcome new people
- 22 subdivisions with unique needs
- Natural features/environment (lake, vacations, holidays)
- Rec facilities
- Cycle friendly/active transportation
- Access to tech and tech infrastructure
- History/air force/tourism (Gimli is on the map already)
- Representation by population
- Working as one
- Community connection corridor
- Aesthetics of community (x2)
- Innovation
- Culture & Celebrations
- Visitors see uniqueness of community
- Pride with recognition
- To meet the needs of all age groups (health, facilities, etc.)
- Housing for low and medium incomes (tiny homes?)
- Transportation (rail, healthy, active, airport)
- Opportunities for all age groups
- Solar energy subsidy
- Leader in healthy environment
- Safe environment
- Affordable place to live
- Enhance technology infrastructure (communications)
2. What could we do as a community to achieve the vision of "Best Small Town in Canada”?
- Healthy living/aging
- Multiplex
- Attractive to families and seniors
- How to move from idea into reality?
- Attract new industry/development in industrial park
- Availability of independent living
- Create non tax based revenues (oil in SW Manitoba example)
- Elected officials need to embrace good ideas
- Rethink the structure and purpose of CDC (advisory group needed)
- Create SMART processes to created connections and communication in community.
- How do we access the lake?
- Beach cleaning
- Branding with chamber
- Infrastructure/Container
- Interactive-virtual smart board (IKE/alexa)
- Enhance technology communications
- Clean transportation
- Lake Winnipeg must be protected
- Diversity for jobs and industry
3. What challenges does Gimli face to get us to "Best Small Town in Canada”?
- Diversity in population needs and wants (not a reference to demographics, more so users/community groups)
- Pulling the community together
- A portion of the community wants no change to support cottage/vacation lifestyle
- I like it simple (common attitude)
- There’s a lack of appreciation/understanding for the RM’s tax base. We have a high taxable assessment that’s not recognized when planning.
- Need to keep taxes affordable
- We need to focus limited resources (volunteers, money, land, etc.)
- Focusing on the things we do well.
- Gimli council needs to work together (One Heart)
- Build from basic ideas for consensus
- Retails demand for patronage (moved to challenges from question #1)
- Need a campground (moved to solutions from questions #1)
- Gimli west /assisted living #5? Is a good model
- Funding
- Leadership (who’s role is what)
- Diversity in Jobs and industry
- More active chamber of commerce
- Crumbling infrastructure
- Technology geospatial GIS
- Digital interactive
- Drawing of an electric car charging station with Alexa