There’s a lot to look forward to in the coming year.
One of the things that tops that list, on the local scene, is an increased level of co-operation between the town and county.
Both mayor Bruce Lennon and reeve Charles Navratil have said that working together is a top priority, and both have rightly argued that we can accomplish more by pooling our resources and efforts.
It has not always seemed that co-operation was at the top of the agenda, however.
The big news of the past year has been the Spirit Centre, and with a completion date of August 2011, there’s a good chance it will make a few more headlines.
Although this project has been controversial, it promises to be a facility that all residents of the region can enjoy for decades to come.
Voters in the county may have decided against contributing to the capital funding costs of the project, but county will be contributing a good chunk of the facility’s operating costs. The Spirit Centre is somewhat of an anomaly in the whole co-operation theme. One of the major accomplishments of this past year required all three of our local municipalities to work together: the regional water co-op.
The communities have also been looking at working together on many other key services, such as bylaw enforcement, community policing, and a variety emergency services.
There are certainly a lot of savings that can come from working together on key projects and services. The lower the overhead costs on these things, the better it will be for all taxpayers.
The obvious next step to combining services is to combine governance and administration. This is not always necessarily a popular idea, but the potential benefits to taxpayers in the region are great.
Just to illustrate how much waste exists as a result of having three separate municipalities, consider that within Westlock County, there are a total of 19 elected officials. Along with those officials come three sets of managers, foremen and administrators. A great deal of their efforts is triplicated.
By comparison, there are a total of 11 RCMP officers working out of the Westlock detachment. It is worrisome when there are more councillors than cops in a region.
While amalgamation is not a change that’s going to happen overnight, and many of our elected officials have said as much, we must be open to the possibility as something that has some significant cost-saving benefits for everyone in the region, no matter which side of the municipal boundaries you live on.
