Skip to content

County delays decision on rec master plan

A recreation master plan commissioned by Westlock County in 2011 will have to wait at least a few more months before council decides what to do with the new-found information.

A recreation master plan commissioned by Westlock County in 2011 will have to wait at least a few more months before council decides what to do with the new-found information.

Councillors decided at their June 25 meeting to delay further deliberations on the recreation master plan until their strategic planning meetings scheduled for September.

After initially seeing the document at their June 11 meeting, councillors decided they needed more time to review the 100-plus page document before commenting and making a decision as to whether the plan could be utilized present-day.

The plan was commissioned by the county in 2011, but was shelved by the council of 2013 and filed away until talk of hiring a new consultant to perform similar work was started during this year’s budget deliberations. An employee who happened to be around at the time remembered much of the work had already been done and knew exactly where to find it.

“I was pleased to read it because I never realized that Westlock County had so many places of interest, I was just blown away by it,” said Coun. Victor Julyan.

The document provides an inventory of all the county’s recreational sites, catalogues the features available to users and even goes into ecosystem types and the varieties of plant life found in the chosen area.

Coun. Dennis Primeau said it was very comprehensive and will be a good tool to help council make future decisions. He still called for more information though and for the ultimate decision to be in the hands of the public.

“I need considerably more information. I want to know where the population is and I don’t want to be making decisions when the population is over there and I’m over here. This is their money and they need to make a decision,” he said.

Reeve Lou Hall called the plan “very beneficial” and “well done,” but wasn’t entirely convinced it was exactly what she was looking for.

“There’s a lot of good information in here, but is that the recreation plan I was focusing on? Not really,” she said, adding the information about the ecology of the sites was extra and didn’t really apply to recreation.

She said she would also like to see more information on the programming available at these sites.

“Let’s get people excited about what there is to do in the county to do for recreation. We don’t always have to be going into the town. We can go somewhere else,” said Hall.

Deputy reeve Brian Coleman said his idea of a recreation master plan would include the development of new facilities and sites for recreation, which the county has no plans for, so the money could be better spent elsewhere, such as the intermunicipal collaboration framework (ICF) process currently underway to identify shared services between neighbouring municipalities.

“We’ve got other priorities and I think $80,000 could be spent more wisely than on a recreation master plan,” said Coleman, suggesting future discussions be put off until strategic planning sessions in the fall.

Coun. Fred Slobodian pointed out that the results of the ICF with the town will help provide a lot more information on recreation and that it would be prudent to delay accepting the recreation master plan until ICF negotiations were complete.

Coun. Jared Stitsen asked if it was possible to put out a survey, or have an open house to help gauge public opinion on what recreation areas are being heavily used and where residents would like to see councillors focus their attention when it comes to recreation opportunities in the region.

“I think it will help in our ICF with the town if we can show where residents want us to focus the money on. It’s more education for us to know where the population is at,” said Stitsen.

Hall agreed that public consultation was important, but pointed out recent county open houses did not attract a lot of attention from residents.

“I’m very confident that you would have more than nine people. This is a deeply engaging process,” said Primeau.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks