Westlock County councillors have identified the waterline north project, Wiesel Creek relocation and transportation as the municipality’s high-level priorities heading into 2018 budget deliberations.
Council unanimously agreed to those priorities at its Nov. 14 meeting and will use those to guide the municipality in the coming year.
“The budgetary process is already in play,” said Coun. Dennis Primeau, who suggested the Top 3 items. “Council needs to lay out its priorities, because coming in afterwards is an abysmal failure.”
Two of the priorities were underway the last term, but were not completed, while the current council agreed upon transportation, Primeau noted.
The first priority is the waterline north to Fawcett. This is the third phase of the Westlock Regional Water Commission project, which needs full backing by all municipalities in the area. Westlock County council has already fully endorsed the line, but the project remains in limbo over funding and hesitation from some municipalities.
The second priority is moving Wiesel Creek 20 metres east, as it has been undercutting Range Road 265 for years. The issue was mentioned to council back in the 1980s and in 2003 council completed a Fisheries Habitat Report. However that report will need to be updated, in addition to obtaining several legal requirements and permits, and increasing the project’s budget in order to move ahead.
The third priority is transportation.
“We can flush that out at a later date, but that will include gravel material, fixing the inverted crowns to get our road up to snuff,” Primeau said. “This will also meet the report from Municipal Affairs. In the review (it) cited an inventory of our roads and what needs to be done, so that will come into that as well.”
The motion comes ahead of a scheduled organizational and strategic planning workshop in January.
The county has booked Gordon McIntosh of the Local Government Institute to facilitate a two-day workshop for approximately $10,000.
CAO Leo Ludwig explained to council that the workshop would involve building an actual strategic plan.
“The reason of scheduling it in January, it gives you some time to get some of that training, some of that orientation done,” he told councillors.
“It gets you through your first budget process. You get a better and deeper understanding of the finances of the county and the challenges, infrastructure condition and all of that stuff, so that when you come to that strategic plan, you’re coming there with an informed view of the organization and we can put together a strategic plan as to what he would like to see accomplished, specifically in your term, but perhaps to set also some direction that would continue on into the future.”
McIntosh has worked with Red Deer County, Yellowhead County, the towns of Okotoks and Slave Lake, and County of Grande Prairie, among others.
Ludwig noted that the workshop was more about facilitating council to work through its priorities, help them specifically identify what they hoped to accomplish, what measures need to be in place to achieve that and in what timeframe.
