Councillors Daryn Watson and Terry Kuyek absent.

Request For Decision (RFD)

Council reviewed one RFD:

· School Board Joint Use Planning Agreement: The Municipal Government Act and the Education Act require a municipality and any school board operating within the municipality’s boundaries to enter into and maintain a joint use and planning agreement.

The joint use of municipal facilities and school board facilities is an important tool in providing educational, cultural and recreational opportunities for residents in a manner that reduces or eliminates the need to duplicate facilities, thereby making the most effective use of the limited economic resources of the municipality and school boards. Council passed a motion approving the Joint Use Planning Agreement with the Pembina Hills School Division.

CAO Report

· The Canada Day BBQ was held on July 1. There was a good turnout despite the poor weather.

· The CAO will meet with representatives from the Alberta Disaster Recovery Program on July 13 to review the program requirements and begin the process of potential financial recovery from the wildfire events and evacuation in May.

· The CAO is on vacation for two weeks starting July 17. 

· The SuperNet upgrade has worked well with no issues. Administration has also reached out to Alberta Registries to begin work on changing the Registries system to the SuperNet.

· Exploring the potential to have some of the Town’s backup server data stored on the Trinus servers at their location. This has not been possible in the past due to poor internet speeds creating too slow of data transfer.

· Continued working through and organizing the costing associated with the wildfire evacuation in preparation for payments and potential disaster recovery qualifying costs.

Operations And Infrastructure

· The new gas generator at the reservoir has been commissioned and is now in service. Mechanical modifications to the system should be completed and commissioned the second week in August, which will be the completion of this initiative.

· Culvert and catch basin replacement project has now gone out to tender. This project should be complete by mid-August.

· The biannual hydrant flushing will occur during the last two weeks of July.

· Pothole patching and road tarring will continue as weather allows.

· The annual sewer flushing will be ongoing in late July and August, as manpower allows.

· Public Works is currently recruiting for one operator and one Supervisory position.

Reports

· Mayor Craig Wilson attended Fort Assiniboine’s bicentennial on the weekend. The event was well attended, with roughly 1500 people. 

· Councillor Bob Clermont attended the Canada Day BBQ. 

· Councillor Jeff Goebel received word about the situation a few weeks ago, where the ambulance based in Swan Hills was redeployed to Slave Lake. It was confirmed that the Swan Hills ambulance had been redeployed as the Slave Lake crew was short-staffed. There was little further explanation beyond that they followed the guidelines and protocol with Alberta Health Services.

By Dean LaBerge, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Original Published on Jul 26, 2023

This item reprinted with permission from   Grizzly Gazette   Swan Hills, Alberta

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