Municipalities on hold for new cabinet

Times Contributor

 

Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties representatives discussed with Wheatland Council whether dealing with the new government would make a difference in the way capital funding was administered.  The Association representatives speculated it will depend if the Municipal Affairs Minister remains the same. 

“Hopefully he will stay as he understands rural challenges,” said Bob Barss, Association President

They were waiting for the appointments to be made and then the committee will re-establish communications. In the past concerns were channeled through the minister to the various committees and departments, and then passed back to the minister with recommendations for the municipalities. The drawback of that system was the various MLA’s were not involved. The committee suggested that copies of communications could be given to the MLA’s so they could have a better understanding of the rural issues.  With the election of Wildrose candidates in most of the rural areas of Southern Alberta, councillors asked if the communication process would change to include those MLA’s.

“We will continue to deal with the party in power, but make sure those rural issues stay strong,” said Barss.

The committee did not feel that they needed to work through the opposition to represent rural interests.

“Just because the political situation changes, it doesn’t change the way we represent the rural municipalities,” said Al Kemmere, Board Director from District Two.

He indicated that rural municipalities bordering the large cities are frustrated by the movement in funding, as they often had to wait on the regional plans by the big centres and found regional plans were making land use decisions for rural areas. Sometimes the province imposing regional solutions on rural municipalities were not heard because they chose not to belong to the regional councils. 

It was noted by Wheatland Council that some provincial funding stopped when rural municipalities were not part of the regional partnership.  The AAMD&C released a paper about forced regionalization called Finding Local Solutions: Examining the Impacts of Forced Regionalization.

Council also objected to the cap rates applied to big centres but no caps were offered to rural municipalities.