City Councilor Brendan Rielly is organizing an economic summit this summer to discuss the city’s future.

Rielly said he hopes to arrange a session sometime this summer with developers, representatives from the Westbrook Chamber of Commerce and other nearby chambers, economic development experts and others to discuss how Westbrook can best position itself for further economic development in the downtown area and beyond.

While most of the city’s focus is now being taken up by work on the budget for the next fiscal year, once that is done, Rielly said the city could turn its focus from budget cutting to inducing economic growth. “With budget time, our focus pretty much turns to how we can reduce costs,” Rielly said. “But at the same time, we don’t want to lose the focus on how we can grow and expand our tax base.”

Diversifying the city’s tax base to include more commercial taxpayers is the best way to ease the burden on property taxpayers, Rielly said. “We constantly need to find ways to attract new businesses,” Rielly said.

Rielly said he has not completed a list of people that he would like to see invited to the summit. He said that he expects to put that list together after the council finishes its work on the budget.

One thing that Rielly does know is that he wants to have the meeting somewhere in downtown Westbrook. “That would give us an opportunity to show off what a good job we are doing,” he said.

Rielly said he would like to have a wide variety of citizens involved in the planning. “I’d like to have a good citizen’s component to this,” he said.

Anyone interested in helping plan the Westbrook economic summit can call Rielly at 856-7704.