It was a day of learning for many local organizations and government officials from across the Humboldt region. The Prairie Innovations Enterprise Region (PIER) held a Regional Planning Summit on April 20 at St. Peter's College, which attracted a crowd of approximately 100 people.The summit was organized to unite the communities in the region who may be affected by the anticipated growth in the area due to the BHP Billiton potash mine that is anticipated to open soon. The summit brought in a number of guest speakers - including Dr. Gordon Sparks from VEMAX Management and Paul Martin from Martin Charlton Communications - to share knowledge and open dialogue on how to best handle economic growth in the region. "It sounds like it was extremely successful," said Steve Brown, director of finance for the City of Humboldt and one of the event organizers. "I've got a number of people commenting on how it was a good initiative to take." Martin explained during his presentation that it is not just our region that is seeing growth, but Saskatchewan as a whole.The mindset in the province has changed from being jealous of what other provinces had to taking matters into our own hands and becoming better business people. "Being in business is about taking initiative, not pointing the finger," said Martin. He explained that with the economic shift to the west, a lot of changes came to the province, and now the communities need to work together to help each other instead of blaming the government for their problems. The event helped the region open up conversation and work together as an alliance to share resources with one another. "There is discussion on doing more regional activities in terms of planning and what not in terms of what was discussed," said Brown. He explained they will not know exactly what exactly came out of the summit until after a debriefing."There is a meeting on May 11 to see where we go from here and how we can push this thing forward," said Brown. He said the ideas have already started to form. "I was in Watson on (that night) and it is looking like there is going to be a regional purchasing organization starting to form," said Brown. The organization would allow the communities in the region to share costs for equipment and other needs as well as allow them to buy locally. Brown explained until the debriefing, "it would really be too early to put a finger on one (most important) topic." There were a lot of good ideas put forward and the region needs to decide where to go now. "We need to decide what other projects can we put forward to help the other communities for the growth," said Brown. One thing they did decide was to hold another summit in the future. "Everyone is in unanimous agreement that we are going to hold another one," said Brown. The next one will not be in Humboldt, but in another community, perhaps Watrous, Watson or Cudworth, explained Brown.
