Municipal Affairs looking at joint meeting

Nikki Jamieson
Vauxhall Advance
njamieson@tabertimes.com

A joint meeting between Municipal Affairs, the Town of Taber and the Municipal District of Taber will take place this year on conflict resolution‚ and they just might have more local councils joining them.

At their regular June 28 meeting, the Municipal District of Taber council received a letter, dated June 15, from Minister of Municipal Affairs Danielle Larivee, addressed to M.D. Reeve Brian Brewin and CC’d to M.D. CAO Derrick Krizsan and the respective mayors and CAOs for Taber, Vauxhall and Barnwell. The letter was written in follow up to the May 24 M.D. council meeting, where council had met with Municipal Affairs representative Michael Scheidl and Lisa Awid-Goltz to discuss services they offer in conflict resolution.

The meeting was in partial response to an April 11 letter that Krizsan and Brewin had been CC’d on, from Larivee to Town of Taber Mayor Henk DeVlieger, thanking the mayor for a March letter about collaboration and partnerships with the M.D. on the fire agreement termination.

Brewin had previously sent a letter in November to the minister on inter-municipal collaboration, where he gave several examples of such M.D. agreements with other organizations, municipalities and districts.

“The fire issue is settled, no need to go back and talk about that,” said Bob Wallace, M.D. councillor. “This is a go-forward program, not rehashing old business. Rehashing old business is off the table, as far as I’m concerned.”

Although the Municipal Affairs delegation had told the M.D. council during the May meeting that they were meeting with Taber town council later that same day, there is no formal record of that meeting.

However, according to the letter, both councils have expressed a desire for a joint meeting with Municipal Affairs, and have extended the invitation to Village of Barnwell council and to Vauxhall council.

“This is the bigger picture, this is consensus,” said Brewin. “This is how do we move forward on this.”

At the previous meeting between the M.D. and Municipal Affairs, they discussed the collaboration, mediation and education services that the provincial department offers to municipalities.

In the proposed future meeting, they are offering to review the mentioned services, assess if the municipalities would like to have opportunities to work together and provide funding information for such joint ventures.

“It’ll be nice to spend a little bit of time on (it), and not be rushed through it.”

The meeting is currently proposed to take place later in the fall of this year. As a few councillors will be busy with the sugar beet harvest at that time, as well as AUMA meeting, council passed a motion to write back and suggest an early November date for the meeting.

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