SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce is "cautiously optimistic" about the city's proposed Con Mine community energy system.

Tim Doyle, chamber executive director, said one of the concerns is that the city will bring up southern businesses to work on the $60-million energy project.

"We're not saying you have to turn around and guarantee every part of the project is going to go to a Northern business," he said. "That's not even realistic.

"Our preference is that they use the local businesses first, if they can do it. We're saying reasonable accommodation here."

Doyle noted a number of fields that could be filled by Northern workers, including roadwork, piping, engineering, construction, manufacturing and security detail.

"There's all kinds of different things that we could play a role in here," he said. "We just don't want all of this business to go to the lowest bidder down in southern Canada who can afford to undercut us because their workforce isn't based here."

During the city's presentation to the Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, Bob Long, the city's senior administrative officer, said if council tells him to make Northern businesses a priority, he will.

He also noted that all three private sector proposals the city received - all unnamed so far - include direct involvement from companies working in Yellowknife.

The chamber's other concern is the city moving ahead without a private partner, said Doyle. He said the chamber would rather the city doesn't take all of the risk.

"Our preference, according to the members we've spoken to, is for some kind of a private operator to come in and operate this entire project," he said. "But with the two options we were given - option one being the city runs the whole project and takes all the financial risk and option two being a public/private partnership - we're just going to strongly word it that we're in favour of option two."

Ultimately, Doyle said the chamber wants the city to be transparent about every step of the process - something he thinks the city is already doing well.

"We just want the whole process to be transparent, so everybody has an opportunity to see that realistically this is a viable project and that everybody knows what's going on - that there's no sort of back room deals where all of a sudden the price jumps from $60 million to $100 million.

"We just want it to remain as transparent as possible in that if there's benefits that can be had for our local business community, that they're going to see it."

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