BANFF – Finding new ways to embrace and live within Banff’s legislated commercial growth cap and townsite boundary is key to solving many of the tourist town’s ongoing issues such as housing and staffing.
That’s according to Allan Buckingham, who filed his nomination papers last week for the Oct. 18 municipal election for his second shot at seeking a seat on council.
He joins other candidates Jessia Arsenio, Hugh Pettigrew, Mark Walker, Shawn Rapley, Dana Humbert and Les Young who have also officially declared.
“Staffing and housing and affordability and visitation, all of these things are super important, but they are all effected by how we look at things,” said Buckingham, a 15-year Banff resident who took an unsuccessful run for a council seat in the last election in 2017.
“I feel there’s still a need for looking long-term at our planning.”
In 1998, the federal government set a cap of 350,000-square-feet of additional commercial development from what existed at the time. Those development rights have been handed out by way of a lottery and Banff is essentially at full build-out.
At the same time, Banff’s townsite boundary was fixed in legislation, meaning no new land was available for development.
Buckingham said he believes Banff has failed to look at all the opportunities that may come with those limits to become a more sustainable community.
“We have a great chance to be a model for other people who don’t have those limits forced on them yet, and I don’t know that we’re looking at them all the time as we should be, and they just affect everything,” he said.
“It seems to be easier to deal with symptoms rather than look at what’s causing some of these things we have to deal with – staffing, housing, affordability – and I want to take a look at some of those root issues.”
Buckingham, who sits as a public representative on the Banff Housing Corporation (BHC), said a lack of affordable housing is a problem in town.
He said housing is not affordable in Banff for many, especially on the average salary in the tourist town.
“Building more housing, more supply, is great,” he said, referring to the BHC’s current development, the Aster, on the 300 block of Banff Avenue. “But we also need to be looking at ways to reduce demand.”
Buckingham said finding people to work in town is challenging, particularly in the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Right now people can’t find staff and you hear lots of stories about that these days. I even got asked to volunteer for a friend of a friend in a restaurant because they couldn’t find enough people,” he said.
“Is the long-term solution just to find more people? I don’t think so. What are the different ways we can help support our businesses in order to potentially run things a little differently?”
Buckingham doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but one idea is to give businesses financial incentives to look at different business and staffing models that would require fewer people to live in Banff, such as hiring remote staff for jobs that don’t need to be done on site.
“That takes the demand pressure off the housing, but that’s not a side we look at. It’s always about let’s increase supply and let’s get more people and cheap people from overseas for our workforce ” he said.
“One of the problems is we don’t have anywhere to put them when they get here – and it costs an arm and a leg – so let’s look at things differently.”
Buckingham said there are no quick fixes to Banff’s challenges with housing, affordability and staffing.
“I recognize I am coming with ideas that are not quick and easy to understand,” he said.
“I hope people can take the time to listen and to think about some of these things because I think it ties back to these immediate issues – housing, affordability, staffing, visitation.”
With 639 votes, Buckingham missed out on a seat in the 2017 election, trailing Peter Poole who got the last seat on council with 873 votes behind all five incumbents – Corrie DiManno (1,324), Ted Christensen (1,036), Grant Canning (1,023), Brian Standish (991) and Chip Olver (920). Poole is not running for re-election.
Standish is taking a run for the mayoral seat in the Oct. 18 election, but none of the other incumbents have filed nomination papers yet.
