Residents of the Wood Heights Estates neighbourhood came before Athabasca town council last week with a very well thought-out presentation that, in a nutshell, culminated with a request that its municipal infrastructure be brought up to par with other, more established neighbourhoods.
Ironically, during the same meeting in which Wood Heights residents asked council for their needs to be made a priority, the shoe was on the other foot as council itself approved a letter asking Alberta Transportation to make its needs – specifically, a new Athabasca River bridge – a priority as well.
There, in microcosm, is the great dilemma of government: with so many different needs, how do you determine which gets priority?
To town council’s defense and credit, as was reported three weeks ago, they have undertaken a municipal infrastructure assessment which should provide it with a clearer picture of what the situation looks like both now and into the future.
Our advice to town council is this: Please do not make this yet another report that’s presented at a council meeting, then relegated to the back of a file cabinet. Take this report, embrace it, run with it, review it and amend it – constantly. For if done properly, this might be the most important document of the last decade.
Athabasca is a community clearly at a crossroads. A number of its older neighbourhoods are starting to see its infrastructure age out, and in need of immediate replacement. Meanwhile, even in the midst of a recession, there is still clearly an appetite for growth, as demonstrated by the Landing Park development.
Caught in the middle are neighbourhoods like Wood Heights that are clearly out of infancy, but still lag behind more established neighbourhoods in regard to infrastructure like paving, parks and pedestrian walkways.
Many a municipal council, in response to a presentation like that made last week by the Wood Heights delegation, would grease the squeaky wheel and move them to the top of the list. But that’s not necessarily fair or prudent.
Once armed with its infrastructure report, council need to initiate a frank, open and very public discussion about what its infrastructure priorities are. And they should renew that discussion on a regular basis.
Guaranteed, the priorities are going to change over time. Equally guaranteed is that at each step, someone won’t be happy. But if we can at least know what the priorities are at any given time, that’d be a huge step forward.
