Mountain View County councillors have reviewed and approved a series of summaries outlining county issues and priorities as they relate to seven provincial ministries. The move came during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
“As part of the inter-governmental communication committee mandate to work at clarifying county issues and priorities to selected provincial ministries, a series of one-page summaries have been developed to provide information to provincial ministries, associate ministers and ministry staff,” said CAO Tony Martens.
“The one-page summaries are also designed to provide quick reference to current issues of concern to Mountain View County that can be updated as need arises or priorities change.”
The summaries outline the county's positions and requests on topics relevant to each respective ministry.
The summaries are being sent to Agriculture and Forestry, Energy, Environment and Parks, Health, Municipal Affairs, Seniors and Housing, and Transportation.
The summary being send to Agriculture deals with Bill 6 (the Enhanced Protection for Farm and Ranch Workers Act), ag plastics recycling and forestry management area setbacks.
Regarding Bill 6, the county calls on the ministry to “continue to engage producers and producer associations actively, and improve on communication efforts with all stakeholders to help alleviate the community perception that their input is irrelevant to the process.”
Regarding ag plastics recycling the county calls on the ministry to “dedicate resources to develop a provincial program for ag recycling, working with the many organizations that have already been championing the cause.”
In the summary being send to Energy, the county calls (among other things) on the province to “reimburse municipalities for school taxes paid on behalf of insolvent companies, in clear cases where this money cannot be retrieved by any other means.”
In the summary being sent to Environment and Parks, the county calls (among other things) on the ministry to “provide an action plan for flood mitigation with respect to the Red Deer River to mitigate future flood events that would impact the Town of Sundre and upstream Mountain View County.”
In the summary being sent to Health, the county calls (among other things) on the ministry to develop a “clear strategy for physician recruitment and retention that takes into account the special circumstances faced by rural areas.”
In the summary being sent to Municipal Affairs the county calls (among other things) on the ministry to “promote negotiation and regional cooperation between municipalities with funding and recognition initiatives, and that forced amalgamation or regional governments are not an option for most rural municipalities.”
In the summary being sent to Seniors and Housing, the county calls (among other things) on the ministry to “continue to fund and support development of appropriate seniors housing in the province in order to house a population that is aging and living longer, yet wanting to age in their communities.”
In the summary being sent to Transportation, the county calls (among other things) on the ministry to “undertake an extension of the northbound acceleration lane (at the QEII and Highway 27 interchange) to allow for merging similar to the southbound set-up at the same interchange. This would allow for merging of vehicles due to the adequate space to get up to QEII highway speed and not requiring a yield by the merging traffic.”
