Westlock’s three area municipalities got a $250,000 boost from the province to move toward great regional collaboration.
Westlock County, the Town of Westlock and Village of Clyde received letters last month from Greg Weadick, acting minister of Municipal Affairs, saying the province would provide $250,000 in support of a regional governance and service delivery project.
The grant money comes under the Alberta Community Partnership program, formerly known as the Regional Collaboration Program.
Under the terms of that program, the money is to be spent on things like developing cost-sharing models, exploring the feasibility of regional governance, developing regional initiatives and undertaking public consultations.
Westlock County is the managing partner with respect to the grant funding.
County interim CAO Rick McDonald said while $250,000 seems like a lot of money, there can be significant expenses associated with inter-municipal projects.
“Once you start hiring consultants and so forth, it will get eaten up fairly quickly,” he said.
Nonetheless, there are opportunities for the county, town and Village of Clyde to work together on new projects, or strengthen the existing relationships.
The end goal for everybody involved, McDonald added, is to be able to save money by working together on service delivery and programs, where it’s appropriate.
“There is an opportunity to look at collectively doing things together; perhaps there’s other areas to look at,” McDonald said.
“I think it’s going to take a) some research, and b) somebody to facilitate everybody talking to each other nicely.”
He added the discussions will take place in the joint services committee meetings, which is where discussions between the three municipalities already take place.
“We need a plan, and I think the three municipalities need to sit down now and work out a working plan,” he said.
“How we’re going to work together how we’re going to address these issues, who’s going to lead and how we’re going to make these decisions.”
Westlock mayor Ralph Leriger said the first step will be to come to an agreement on how the discussions will take place moving forward.
At the May 26 council meeting, councillors passed a resolution to adopt a regional collaboration discussion protocol following an in-camera discussion.
“It is just the beginning steps. It allows for the development of protocols that will guide our collaborative initiatives going forward,” he said.
“Those discussion protocols are the first thing to set the rules of engagement.”
As for what the $250,000 might be spent on, or in what direction he would like to see the discussion go, he said it’s simply too soon to say — at this point it would simply be guessing.
“You start with the rules of the game, and establish the way to have a good constructive dialogue and make sure the needs of the region are looked after, but the autonomy and respect for each individual municipality is included in that,” he said.
Westlock County reeve Bud Massey echoed that, saying it’s too soon to give any specifics or speculate on what regional collaboration will look like — and whether it may ultimately lead to amalgamation of the region’s municipalities.
“The three councils are going to get together and have talks about, not specifically about amalgamation, but about how we can work together more effectively, he said.
“Anything coming out of those talks will be a joint release from the three councils.”
