It was a successful meeting at the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) conference for the City of Cold Lake.
Mayor Craig Copeland, along with other City representatives, were in Calgary earlier this month for the annual meeting, which focused on a number of topic affecting Alberta municipalities including funding, police costs and communities working together. The first time an AUMA meeting has been held under the new NDP government, Copeland said both Premier Rachel Notley's and Minister of Municipal Affairs Deron Bilous' speeches were “very encouraging”.
One point that particularly caught the City's attention was the desire to build stronger dynamic communities by getting rural and urban areas to work together.
“Minister Bilous, I think, had one of the most visionary speeches I've heard from a Minister of Municipal Affairs ever. He has a vision and it's up to us municipal elected officials to go there with him, he wants to modernize local governments to build thriving communities – rural and urban coming together is what he said,” expressed Copeland.
He added, “The writing was on the wall, that you can't have municipalities with some at $1 million of assessment per capita while you've got others that are at $100,000 per capita of assessment...I support his vision for modern communities, it's the right vision.”
During the AUMA meeting, Notley brought forward issues that “the former PC government didn't want to go into”. On top of the guarantee of MSI funding, according to Copeland the province will be looking at leveling the playing field when it comes to certain costs such as RCMP service.
“They recognize there's an inequity across Alberta in terms of what level of funding each municipality has to pay for in their community – once your population reaches a certain level you're paying like 90 percent of the costs for the contract. For Cold Lake, we're looking at over $2 million in policing, where the rural areas get it for free.”
Over 1,000 municipal representatives from across the province gathered at the conference. Each community group was able to participate in a “speed dating” type exercise, meeting personally with Bilous for 15 minutes. The City of Cold Lake took advantage of that opportunity to ask about the future of the ID 349 (Cold Lake Air Weapons Range) money.
“We discussed the ID 349 transition to the City of Cold Lake. That work that was done by the PC government in terms of transitioning the range to the City of Cold Lake, we're a template for (Bilous') vision,” said Copeland. “Urban communities need a helping hand, by Cold Lake being able to have that extra bit of money to leverage, you build a stronger community for everybody and that was the message the minister was delivering.”
Another issue that Copeland raised during the AUMA meeting was the problems the City faces when it comes to ambulance service. While he didn't get the chance to finish his question, city officials will be having a follow-up meeting about it this week.
Copeland further expressed his displeasure to Energy Minister Margaret McCuaig-Boyd that the Cold Lake – Bonnyville area was left out of having an open house for oil and pipeline discussions, noting that local officials have to travel to Edmonton to participate in the debate.
The answers might not have all been satisfactory, but overall the local mayor was pleased with this year's AUMA.
“It was definitely one of the best AUMA meetings I've gone to and I've been going to them since 2004, this was one of the better ones.”
