The Mayor’s Breakfast served up a strong shot of regional collaboration with their pancakes and coffee at Memorial Hall Oct. 26.
A full house of business people and community members packed the hall for a morning focused on networking with municipalities in the region.
Town of Westlock mayor Ralph Leriger highlighted the growing importance of collaboration through changes to the Municipal Government Act.
“These changes are all about regional collaboration,” he said to the crowd. “Municipalities are soon to be required by legislation to enter into regional agreements to form intermunicipal development plans. These agreements will need to set a cohesive plan for growth, a coordinated plan for land use, and the efficient delivery of regional services.”
By working together, Leriger noted that it would give rural municipalities a stronger voice to get essential provincial and federal funding.
“We also know that if we want to attract industry and private investment into our region, we must have the infrastructure necessary to support industry and the facilities to attract and retain a skilled workforce,” he said.
The town is in the initial stage of a regional collaboration study to look at service levels in the town, Westlock County, and Village of Clyde. The study will then offer recommendations on how those municipalities should move forward and work together.
“The regions that are successful right now in accessing capital to build the necessary infrastructure, attract industry, create jobs, are those that have already established a regional vision,” Leriger said. “They’ve set in place agreements, where development should occur, and how it should be mutually funded to benefit the entire community. We must demonstrate cooperation and good governance to potential investors. Simply put folks, people don’t want to invest in a warzone.”
Erica Thomas, president of Transitional Solutions Inc., the group conducting the study, spoke at the breakfast and said they would be focusing on six main areas: protective services; recreational services; regional airport; water commission; waste commission; and regional economic development.
“The end goal is economic development, it’s growing the region, it’s becoming a prosperous region, it’s becoming more competitive in attracting residents and attracting businesses and being able to have the services in your region that your residents would like,” she said.”
The breakfast also featured presentations from a local concrete business and a seniors’ housing builder on how their business thrived through municipal collaboration.
Rock Solid Concrete Planning’s John Both said he chose Westlock because of correct zoning, its central location, and skilled workforce.
“The biggest thing is we have supporters in your administration,” he said. “We’ve talked to every region, every community around us, and we will say that without a doubt this community has been the most supportive of growing business.”
Prestige Group/Seed Builders founder Caleb West grew up in Westlock and told the crowd he came back to grow his business because of a strong personal connection and financial benefits including location, regulations and cost savings.
Seed Builders are in the midst of constructing adaptable housing options for seniors, including a bungalow for West’s mother.
“With the rezoning process, we worked with the current planning division to get through them,” he said. “They were really supportive, which was great, because when we go to talk to Alberta Land Titles or Municipal Affairs, it really, really helped that we had backing and the support here like, ‘Westlock’s ready to roll, why are you guys holding things up?’ It gave us a little bit of leverage that we wouldn’t have had.”
Outside the business sector, Dr. Jan Lategan, an orthopedic surgeon at the Westlock Healthcare Centre, spoke about shaping the area as a model of efficient knee and hip replacement surgery.
“Healthcare is a regional institution,” he said, adding, “We’re able to affect a fair bit of significant medical care in a small community as Westlock.”
From 2011-2015, Lategan said most patients came from the Alberta Health Services (AHS) North Zone, but nearly half came from other parts of the province.
He also noted the success the hospital has had when it came to patient acute length of stay. The centre ranked the lowest in acute length of stay out of hospitals in Calgary, Edmonton and Medicine Hat, clocking in at two-and-a-half days, which was less than the three-day benchmark.
“We are really able to use the facilities best and then able to get these people out with the shortest length of stay,” he said, although he ensured that patients were discharged when they were safe and ready to go.
“The hospital is a place of sick people and these people aren’t sick — they just need a tire replacement,” he said.
However, he cautioned the audience about pitfalls to regional collaboration, and how regional boards must balance providing quality service and care, and still be small enough to cut through red tape.
“Unfortunately, AHS doesn’t have good track record when it comes to management of health regions,” he said. “We’ve seen cuts and expansions on a regular basis. We started with 12 regions, than to nine, than to three. Presently, we’re at five and that showed bureaucracy in motion.”
