Summer villages are open to discussing their future financial contributions to municipal services in Athabasca County.
That’s the message Bob Yontz, Mayor of the Summer Village of Island Lake, had for county council after the Oct. 16 issue of the Advocate reported that county councillors were tired of waiting for the summer villages to respond to proposals for additional financial support.
With county council emphasizing the need for a meeting with summer village representatives to discuss such matters, Yontz said his council would be there.
“At the end of the day, we need to do this and have this meeting in order to move forward,” he said.
“We are completely open to the idea and we need to work this issue out so that we can all work together in a more positive way in the future. Finger pointing doesn’t do anybody any good on either side.”
According to county chief administrative officer Gary Buchanan, in the spring of 2010 the county proposed a series of financial contributions and wanted to set up a meeting to discuss the proposals, but there was a summer village election in August of that year. That’s when communication started to break down.
“We can appreciate that there was an election since we submitted a proposal to the summer villages, and that the new elected officials needed time to catch up,” Buchanan said.
“Just over a year ago, in or around June 2011, we had a meeting with the summer villages and asked them if they had had a chance to review the proposals, and they had indicated that they hadn’t had time but they would look at it. They wanted to hold off on any further discussions until the meeting in the fall. We agreed, but the meeting in the fall was cancelled and there was no meeting in the spring of this year, so we haven’t had a chance to sit down and talk about it with everyone.”
Now the county’s focus is scheduling that meeting as soon as possible, according to Buchanan.
“We would like to have a chance to sit down and have a broader discussion about contributions to county services such as Family and Community Support Services and the recreation facilities throughout the county, amongst other things as well,” said Buchanan.
“We want to have a discussion about how we can better work together for the mutual benefit of all our residents.”
Buchanan noted that he is still waiting to hear back from a few summer village representatives before he sets a date for the meeting, but he hopes it happens before 2013.
Yontz hadn’t been aware of the county’s proposal from 2010.
“This proposal was before our time on council and I wasn’t aware of any agreement or draft proposal before this, so it wouldn’t surprise me if other people didn’t know either,” Yontz said.
“Going forward, we of course want to keep the services available to our residents and we want to be able to carry our own weight. We want to be able to figure out how we can work together.”
Yontz noted that his village had made contributions to services like the library fund and they also help to support a skating rink in Island Lake South that is used by both summer village and county residents.
“The bottom line is the summer villages are doing a good job of providing services to their citizens at a good price, and we want to be able to continue to do that in conjunction with the county as well,” he said.
“We want to remain autonomous and independent as a separate council because we all have different issues and different requirements for our citizens, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look forward at sharing resources and services and costs.
“It’s time to have a discussion and put this all behind us once and for all.”
