BOYLE – Village of Boyle councillors unanimously passed the terms of reference for the new Tourism and Economic Development (TED) committee, finalizing the administrative side of months-long conversation.
During their July 5 meeting, councillors voted 5-0 in favour of passing the documents, which they first viewed June 21.
While there was some concern that passing the terms would lock them into a committee before they had solid numbers on the financial commitment, councillors agreed that this was just the first step; in order to make the bigger decisions on what Boyle’s involvement will look like with the committee, they had to agree with both Athabasca County and the Town of Athabasca on what the new rules would be.
“From what I understand, because of the involvement of the three municipalities in the past, it would be those three who will decide on the terms of reference moving forward,” said mayor Colin Derko.
“We aren’t making any financial commitments, or anything else to do with TED, we just need to get these terms of reference down before we can even go into that discussion.”
The document hasn’t changed much from when it was first developed through a working group — similar to how the committee will run, each municipality appointed two councillors to help develop the terms — and as Derko pointed out, many of the changes had to do with how the members-at-large were assigned, how long they served, and where they would represent.
“The TED commitments and stuff are a different discussion, but as far the terms go, at least to me, there’s nothing they would change that would make me say yay or nay to TED.”
Coun. Barb Smith agreed, saying, “I think the bigger discussion around this is going to happen down the road.”
The concern for the village is the cost; under the previous iteration of TED, they paid roughly $5,000, and had a single seat on the committee — there had been a single representative from both the town and the village, and most of the committee was Athabasca County councillors.
During the June 21 meeting, Athabasca County interim CAO Pat Vincent had been able to give the councillors some rough numbers; according to his math, which used the equalized assessment values for the three municipalities, Boyle would be paying for approximately four per cent of the committee’s budget, which would cost $4,953 a year.
Now that all three have passed the finalized documents — the town did so during its July 11 council meeting — Boyle’s councillors are hoping to discuss what direction the committee will go at the next tri-council meeting.
“The TED committee always was and always has been a county initiative that the other two municipalities were invited into, and I don’t think anything has changed on that. It’s always been a working group, but it’s always been one that was created by the county,” said Derko.
