$30,000 incentive has made it known across the country that Moosomin is growing and needs new homes

August 19, 2024, 10:51 am
Kevin Weedmark

There was a lot of back and forth as Moosomin town council tried to come up with just the right way to position the residential building incentive that is intended to ease the local housing shortage.

The plan came together with the collaboration of town council, the Economic Development Committee, and the Community Builders Alliance.

The original idea was to offer free water and sewer hookups for new houses, and to forgive property taxes for the first three years.

The cost of that would add up to about $30,000 per property, so the decision was made to turn the incentive around, and pay $30,000 upfront when a new home was constructed, or $30,000 for the first door and $8,000 for each additional door in the case of multi-family developments.

The hope and the expectation was that by turning the incentive around, developers would show interest, and the expectation was also that the unique approach would get the town some publicity.

I suspect that no one expected that publicity to go as far as it has other than me. After spending a lifetime in the media, I know that unique ideas to solve common problems are always going to get a lot of mileage.

Many communities have a problem with a lack of housing. Moosomin came up with a new way to tackle the problem, and of course many in the media are going to be eager to tell the story of this new idea to solve a problem that affects communities across the country.

So I wasn’t surprised at all to see how far the story went.

After our article came out, I shared it with some of my friends in the media, and the story went further and further and further as more media picked up on it. It made CTV and CBC national news, many local newscasts, the Leader-Post, Global, and many more media outlets.

Last week and the week before EDC chair Murray Gray, EDO Casey McCormac, Mayor Larry Tomlinson and myself were doing interview after interview. Tuesday, CTV’s Sierra D’Souza Butts and a national CBC TV crew were both in town doing interviews.

On Friday, I did an interview with CBC Radio’s As It Happens.

A little aside, I have a bit of a history with As It Happens. I have been interviewed on the show several times, and one time a few years ago, when I decided to make a point when there were a couple of parachute candidates coming in to contest an election, As It Happens won a World-Spectator subscription.

Both the NDP and the Liberals were running candidates from outside the riding, something this newspaper has always taken an editorial stand against.

The Liberal candidate was from Saskatoon and couldn’t be contacted at all, so I offered a free subscription to anyone who could supply a photo of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or the Liberal candidate.

The story went viral, and people searched for the Liberal candidate, and a CBC reporter eventually tracked him down at the garage where he worked in Saskatoon—where he initially denied who he was.

In every interview I’ve had, I’ve tried to emphasize how unique and wonderful this part of the world is, and when the interviewer with As It Happens said she wasn’t quite ready to make the move to Moosomin, I suggested that she at least had to visit us!

All of the publicity can’t help but be good for southeast Saskatchewan.

I have had calls and emails at the Chamber from people from across the country who want to find out more about the area, many of whom are very, very interested in moving to the area.

Thanks to town council for passing such a great incentive plan!