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LTIS students grill county councillors

Grade 6Fs were learning about local government at April 27 council meeting

ATHABASCA – Athabasca County councillors took the biggest grilling of their young political careers last week as students from Landing Trail Intermediate School (LTIS) paid a visit to council chambers to get a few things straight. 

Madame Jennifer Jones’ Grade 6F French Immersion class attended a portion of the county’s April 27 meeting to learn about the structure and function of local government as part of the Social Studies curriculum, and each student had an opportunity to ask specific councillors questions ranging from their favourite thing about being a councillor, to explaining when the roads near Perryvale are going to get fixed. 

Coun. Joe Gerlach got both those questions. 

What is the best part of being a county councillor? 

According to Gerlach, it’s having delegations like the one from the students that day. 

“Mostly it’s meeting and interacting with the public,” he replied. 

That left Coun. Natasha Kapitaniuk to respond to the opposite question, that being the worst part of being a county councillor. She put it in a way the kids could relate to. 

“I'd say the worst part is probably having to sit still for long periods of time; having to raise my hand before I want to talk; and having to learn not to interrupt people because I like to do a lot of talking,” she said. “Sometimes the worst part is just not having time at home to clean my room and do my chores and all the things that you're supposed to do when you're at home in the evening,” 

Coun. Ashtin Anderson was asked how many phone calls she fields from residents. The answer was actually surprisingly few compared to her fellow councillors, but she chalked that up to bad service in her part of Division 3 more than anything. 

“Many residents choose to contact me via email or discuss things with me when they catch me in town — at the grocery store, at the post office. Improving my communication skills and the way I connect with residents is one of my top personal professional development goals.” 

Reeve Brian Hall then had a chance to explain how the roles of a reeve and a councillor differ as the questions kept coming. 

Hall, the councillor for Division 4, explained that all nine councillors have the same authority and the same single vote, but the reeve is selected among the group of councillors to chair council meetings and holds signing authority as the chief elected officer of the municipality. 

“The reeve is the chief elected official and municipalities are required to have one and it’s selected at the organizational meeting of county council. So, once a year we get together and talk about who's going to serve on which committees. There are many, many committees to assign and we all take different jobs,” he said. 

He also pointed out all councils, and municipalities, follow the procedures of the Municipal Government Act which lays out how a council, as an entity, makes the decisions that trickle down through the organization. 

Coun. Tracy Holland produced a paper copy of the MGA upon Hall’s request — a two-inch thick stack of bound, double-sided text.  

Holland also fielded the question of what most of the taxes collected by the municipality are used for. She noted the budget could be found on the county website, and shows more than $22 million in spending with more than $13 million going toward road construction and maintenance. 

The question of how much road that is exactly, went to Coun. Gary Cromwell. 

Cromwell asked the students to picture a map of North America, and to take a quick trip to Las Vegas, about 2,500 km away 

“Now if you take every road in Athabasca County and put them end to end to end, that's over 2,400 kilometres of road. So really, the county has enough road to drive from this building to Las Vegas, Nevada,” he said. “It would take about 24 hours, the entire day driving non-stop to get to every single piece of road we take care of, and that's why my friend Coun. Holland told you we spend a boatload of money on roadways.” 

Coun. Kelly Chamzuk was asked how many meetings she attends in a month. 

For the month of May, she said she has 16 meetings scheduled, including two regular council meetings, public works, policy review, budget and finance, ag service board and municipal planning meetings, along with two days at a conference, and any number of other committee meetings she attends as part of her job as a member of council. 

“This does not include the hours of prep time for meetings, or the phone calls and e-mails from county residents,” she said. 

The next question went to Coun. Rob Minns who was asked what it was like to run for election and how he encouraged the electorate to vote for him. 

He replied that the most difficult thing about running his campaign was getting permission from his wife. Besides that, he thought his background of 31 years as a public works operator for the county would be useful to council. That was one of the points he brought to residents on their doorsteps during the campaign, he said. 

“I don’t want to say I went to 100 per cent of the ratepayers’ yards but I can say that I went to 99 per cent.” 

Next, Division 9 Coun. Camille Wallach was asked for her opinion on the biggest issue facing the county. She noted it was a complex question that every councillor may have their own response to, but to her, the declining population of the county and economic development are at the top of her list. 

“We recently received a report from Stats Canada that shows Athabasca has the No. 1 decreasing population of any municipality in Canada from 2016 to 2021, we have decreased in population by 11.6 per cent. So, this is obviously alarming and in my opinion one of my top priorities we should be looking at,” she said. 

She also posed a question back to the class, asking them to give a lot of thought to what they would do to make the Athabasca area better and to discuss it in class. 

New CAO Rod Risling didn’t escape the barrage of questioning just because it was his first regular council meeting in the position. He was asked what exactly it is that he does. 

Risling replied he was honoured to lead a team of 75 people to deliver the services county residents depend on every day, noting it was that team that prepares councillors for those many meetings they attend, to provide them with the information they’ll need to make an informed decision on behalf of the ratepayers, who elected them. 

“And so, they make the decisions, what they think is best for the community, and ultimately, it's my responsibility to ensure that our team meets those directions that counsel gets so they make the big decisions, and then it’s my job to make sure that they're done in the most cost-effective and efficient manner,” Risling said. 

So, when are the roads around Perryvale going to get better?  

That was the question posed to Coun. Gerlach, on behalf of a student’s father. 

It’s a complicated answer, but Gerlach started the answer which went to different corners of the council table. 

“As you heard earlier, we have 2,400 km of road and basically what we're doing is trying to fix the worst first, to get as many as we can and try to do it uniformly throughout the county in every corner of the county,” he said. 

Reeve Hall noted that budgets provide for a certain number of kilometres to be repaired in each division per year, and with those limitations it would take 300 years to work from top to bottom. 

Madame Jones distilled the visit down, bringing the lesson of the day back to the forefront. 

“One of the things we study is that the more services you have and growth you have the more we need money to pay for it,” she said. “It's kind of one of those things where citizens have to decide if they want to pay more taxes, or do they want their roads in better condition? Those are all things that you have to balance because roads don't get repaired without money that's coming in from the landowners.” 

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