The Okotoks Downtown Steering Committee is re-allocating funding in a way it believes will benefit the area in the future.

Okotoks Town Council approved $70,000 originally set for a Wayfinding Signage Study Master Plan to now go towards working on a branding and marketing plan for downtown.

The Committee wrote to council that the Town first needs to know who it wants to attract and what it wants to be known for before proceeding with a signage study.

Carrie Fischer, Chair of the Steering Committee, says the money will be used to bring in a tourism expert for the job.

"It's going to go towards hiring Roger Brooks to come back into the community." she says. "It's a 12-to-13 week branding consultation-engagement with the community that he undertakes and it's a well set out formula that he's done throughout North America when ever he's gone into communities with this."

Fischer says it would be a follow through and outcome from the work Brooks did when he visited Okotoks in 2014.

She says one point consistently raised by residents is they want Okotoks to maintain a small town feel.

"What is that and how do we maintain that while we grow?," she says. "Part of that will be flushed out in this branding study, we'll be able to articulate that just a little bit more and make sure that we're able to cherish it. It focuses in large part on downtown is what we've repeatedly heard so we need to know from the community if that is in fact the case."

Fischer says now is the right time to take action on Brooks' suggestions, as more annexation is happening in the Foothills.

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