MLA Hunter advocates city status for Taber

By Trevor Busch
Taber Times
editor@tabertimes.com

With the Town of Taber recently exploring the idea of reincorporating as a city, at least one local representative is in full support.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter.

He argues enhancing the town’s status for outside observers might seem like a minor cosmetic change, but big pockets have a magnifying glass on southern Alberta right now.

“The reality is that when we’ve got multinational companies that are going to be coming in looking at where they want to do site location for their agrifood processing business, they’ll look at this corridor and they’ll say, ‘Well, you have Lethbridge on the one side, you have Medicine Hat on the other side, you have another city in between.’ And by virtue of it being a city they’ll say, ‘Well, it probably has the population and the skill sets’ and all the things that they need, so I think that’s actually going to be a benefit if they are able to go forward with that, especially for the agrifood processing quarter that I’m working on.”

With investors eyeing the region for increased development along the Highway 3 agrifood corridor, Hunter pointed out that previous drawbacks like taking over highway maintenance from the province are no longer a stumbling block.

“It has been eliminated. So any drawbacks or challenges that people considering this proposal might be or should be aware of, I haven’t seen any. If it’s a provincial road, then the province will still take care of it. So I don’t see any downside to it, to tell you the truth.”

The results of an online Taber Times poll on the subject published on Sept. 18 showed just 26 per cent of respondents in favour of the idea, with 74 per cent opposed.