WOODLANDS COUNTY - Woodlands County councillors hope to bend the ear of Transportation and Economic Corridors Minister Devin Dreeshen about a trio of transportation-related items.
During the Sept. 27 council meeting, Councillors instructed administration to set up a face-to-face meeting with the minister during the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) fall conference in early November.
The RMA is an independent association comprising 69 counties and municipal districts of Alberta. Its purpose is to advocate for issues impacting rural municipalities at the provincial and federal levels.
Reeve Dave Kusch told council that traditionally, ministers of key cabinet posts make themselves available to talk to municipal council delegations to discuss their top items of concern.
The ministers limit discussions to three topics.
As of the meeting, only Dreeshen's office had reached out to municipalities asking if they would like to meet with the minister.
Topics of discussion council approved included airport and Strategic Transportation Infrastructure Program (STIP) funding, bridges, specifically the condition of the bridges in Woodlands County crossing the Athabasca River, outside the hamlets of Fort Assiniboine and Blue Ridge, and the reclassifying of bridge classifications.
The province created STIP as a way to help municipalities solve their infrastructure deficit as well as to help boost the economy and create jobs as part of its response to the coronavirus.
Goose Lake/Freeman River Coun. Peter Kuelken agreed, saying a face-to-face meeting with the transportation minister would be worthwhile.
"The sense I got when we met with his delegate [Alberta Transportation north central and Fort McMurray regional director Michael Botros during a Sept. 30 Whitecourt special council meeting] is that we were being given a brush over," he said.
Councillors invited Botros to the meeting to discuss the condition and potential replacement of the 68-year-old Athabasca River Bridge about two minutes south of the hamlet and bank erosion issues at two locations on the banks of the Freeman River. On Aug. 10, part of the concrete in the middle of the driving lanes gave way, leaving a hole roughly three-and-a-half to four feet wide and six feet long on the bridge. The damage has been repaired.
"We really need to push those items with the minister," he said.
Whitecourt West Coun. John Burrows concurred, adding the Athabasca River Bridge file is one of many bridge structures the municipality needs to be concerned about.
"There are also very new [provincial changes] around bridges that may significantly add to the municipality's bridge file," he said, referring to the discussion that would effectively reclassify what size a culvert has to be before the province considers it a bridge. "There will be a cost to us and several other municipalities."
Burrows said he would also like to bring up the topic of airport funding for airports.
He added that while the Whitecourt Airport was one of the region's crown jewels, "it was also a blessing and a curse" for the municipality as its ratepayers were the "ones on the hook" to maintain it.
Before the 1990s, Burrows said, airports were mainly the federal government's jurisdiction.
"But the [federal Liberal government] wanted to dump a bunch of them," he said. "The province, in the continuing trend of downloading after picking up a good chunk of them, offloaded them to municipalities."
The problem, Burrows said, is that they have provided no funding for upkeep despite the fact the province uses the airports.
"We had all four of the province's waterbombers at our airport multiple times. It has become a strategic hub [for Alberta Wildfire]," he said. "So it would be nice to have a conversation with [Alberta Transportation] about funding airports properly, especially given in light of the review [the province] is doing around [Alberta Health Services] making use of the airports."
Whitecourt East Coun. Jeremy Wilhelm agreed, saying when councillors met with provincial officials to talk about a wildfire protection plan, they told them that the Whitecourt Airport was among the busiest in the province.
"It would be nice to know the percentage of all the movements at the airport, how many of them are coming from the bombers and other fire equipment because each one of those movements has an impact on our infrastructure," he said.
Burrows, a pilot, agreed, saying that the larger aircraft beat up the runway.
"You can smash down a Cessna 172 all day and not do any damage on the runway," he said, "It is like riding a bicycle up and down a road."
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
