Community Enhancement funds allocated

By Sharon McLeay Times Contributor

Community projects will start spring off with spring funding, to complete needed repairs and add support for village and hamlet non-profit organizations.
“Annually the Wheatland County Community Enhancement Regional Board, CERB for short, meets to review, evaluate and decide the distribution of the funding set aside in the Community Enhancement Reserve,” said Chair Marcy Field. “This program began in 2012 and has provided $2,846,289 for the enhancement and betterment of the Wheatland County community.”
The board met in February and March 2018 to decide successful awards.
The Community Enhancement Reserve is part of the County budget set aside each year, so that non-profit organizations can apply for needed project funding support
This year the board had 57 requests totaling an ask for $743,081. Fifty applications were approved costing $387,585. Five projects from previous years were given extensions to complete their projects. Incomplete projects without extensions are supposed to return funding for lack of compliance on grants. The board usually leaves a reserve in the fund and this year it amounts to $30,456. The complete list of awards is attached to the May 1 Wheatland County agenda posted on their website.
“It’s great to connect with people across the county and see them working together to serve our county in the decision making process,” said Field.
Council approved the recommendations of the CERB and Reeve Koester commented that the board provided a valuable service to the ratepayers and the council.

Voyent alert system improves
Wheatland County is considering subscribing to a new localized alert system called
Voyent Alert. It would be particularly handy given all the recent road closures, due to flooding that happened this year.
“Wheatland County has experienced several emergencies over the past few years. During such situations, communicating with the public regarding access and safety is important,” said Lisa Bastarache, communications coordinator for Wheatland County.
She said a lack of communications became evident when wildfires necessitated a door-to-door evacuation effort.
Voyent states on its webpage that the Advanced Geofencing app provides greater control over the targeting of a specific audience. Day-to-day communications such as advising of a water main shut-off or change in garbage day pickup can be quickly communicated only to those community members impacted by the service change.
The flexible platform serves the dual purpose of alerting and advising residents during critical incidents, as well as providing targeted day-to-day communication services and allows administrators to broadcast timely and relevant notifications such as a wildfire’s speed and direction of approach, or the location and toxicity perimeter of a gas leak. Support for nested regions ensures users will be notified if they are in a static location, or on an escalating basis if the user is travelling toward the affected region.
People visiting the area can also tap into the service for notifications. The app allows users to designate multiple locations that they would like to monitor, such as school, work or recreation sites, in order to get important alerts.
The service uses the cloud, so some users may have concerns about privacy but the company stated that it has measures in place to adhere to Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act of Canada (PIPEDA) standards.
The service was developed by a local company located in Calgary, ICEsoft Technologies.
Wheatland’s Communications Coordinator Lisa Bastarache said this will help ratepayers stay informed of changes in services in the community and improve communication efforts in emergency situations. She said the county is also looking to set up fan-out programs in the various communities, so that those who do not have mobile communication devices can be notified with important information.
The service would cost the county about $4,000 for its subscription, but county residents would not be charged to use the app.

Hussar Fire includes ratification for association dissolution
Hussar Fire Association submitted their annual report to council on May 1. The complete annual meeting minutes, election of officials and budget is included in the report and attached to the May 1 agenda posted on the Wheatland County website.
Hussar Fire crews responded to 38 calls in 2017 with the largest response to medical calls, wildfires and motor vehicle accidents.
An addition to their bylaws was the ratification for dissolution of the association. The board did a SWAT assessment and listed some of the issues the association had encountered over the years. Some were volunteer burnout and recruitment, no board succession planning, government regulations, cost and revenue stresses, no involvement in emergency planning decisions, declining population to support association, equipment costs and disaster impacts on budget requirements. Positives included experienced board, balanced budget and operational reserves, up to date equipment, municipal, support, policy development, officer succession plan, local disaster plan and fundraising registration.
The village is waiting to hear about the provincial viability decision from the minister and whether that will influence the way the services are delivered.