Woodlands County councillors voted unanimously to pass a motion during their Sept. 1 meeting to hold off on any video conferencing upgrades until the matter can be discussed during their 2021 budget deliberations.
During their July 21 council meeting, councillors had voted 4-3 to direct administration to put out a tender to local companies to upgrade the Whitecourt and Fort Assiniboine offices with audio/visual equipment that would allow for better livestreaming of council meetings.
In his report, CAO Gordon Frank said Municipal Affairs had issued guidelines on how municipal council meetings should be conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a bare minimum, they are required to stream audio of council meetings.
While Woodlands County has been doing just that since late April, Frank suggested a video conferencing upgrade would allow for council to actually physically gather together while maintaining two metres of physical distancing.
Frank said the county had reached out to prospective vendors and advertised in local newspapers, but had only gotten two bids, one of which was significantly over the deadline.
Inland Audio Visual from Edmonton had submitted a quote to upgrade the Whitecourt administration office at a price of $68,882 and the Fort Assiniboine office at a cost of $43,094. Neither price included GST.
Since council had capped spending on these upgrades at $75,000, administration’s recommendation was to just upgrade the Whitecourt office this year and hold off on upgrades to Fort Assiniboine to 2021.
Coun. Ron Govenlock pointed out that in 2019, Woodlands County suspended all unnecessary spending due to a budget revenue shortfall of $3 million, which largely represented the unpaid property taxes owed by two oil and natural gas companies.
Now they were presented with another possible major hit to revenue: a change to the assessment model that could reduce the county’s coffers by $1 to $3.1 million just in 2021.
“When are we going to understand and accept the fact that we need to be looking at budget expenditures that are needed … and cut back on these others?” he said.
Govenlock also indicated he was opposed to upgrading the Whitecourt office and then delaying upgrades to Fort Assiniboine to 2021.
Coun. Dave Kusch suggested that, given where the county is in terms of coming up with money to do road projects, it would be more beneficial to put this project off to 2021.
“The reason we are partly in the position we are is because of unbudgeted items for the past few years,” said Coun. Bruce Prestidge. “If this is that important, then we should put it in next year’s budget.”
Coun. Dale McQueen expressed a similar sentiment, but added that while the current format of livestreaming meetings wasn’t perfect, it was working.
Ultimately, Kusch put forward the motion to delay these upgrades to 2021. Govenlock put forward a friendly amendment to put the matter over to budget deliberations, so that it wouldn’t be seen as being already approved by council.
