Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Alive and well in the Crowsnest Pass

Well I have not posted in the last month, but of course that does not mean things have not been happening. Below is a list of issues that people have requested an update on over the last few weeks.
Council is working hard on a number of issues:

Budget was finalized back in December now all we have to do is set the mill rate which is coming to council on April 6th. Just to refresh every body's memory we had given direction to administration to bring back a budget with a maximum of a 3% tax increase.
We are anticipating a surplus the amount of which will be determined at the meeting of April 6th, in my opinion we need to start rebuilding our reserves which six years ago were sitting at almost $4 million, at the end of this fiscal year will be sitting at a little over $600,000 as I have argued a number of times that is to low.
The dollars were used to do a lot of infrastructure work over the last five years, but now is the time that we must start building those reserves back up.

In March we also began the process of reviewing our Community Standards Bylaw, council members provided their input on what they would like to see and a draft of a much stronger bylaw as been sent to our lawyers to make sure it conforms with provincial legislation.
On the meeting of April 6th there will also be a motion debated by council to demolish the Maple View Hall in Bellevue if we are going to be serious about cleaning up our community then the Municipality and its politicians needs to lead the way.

Crowsnest Centre we are being told by administration that the Municipality and LCC are close to having an agreement to relocate to the MDM, I am holding my breath with anticipation. After being told by so many people that the Consortium would never relocate. I am going to have to go back through my pile of newspaper clipping and look at all those headlines about the "death of education in the Crowsnest Pass"

Election its coming October 18th the opportunity to bring forth your name will be provided for anybody that wishes to participate in the democratic process. Rumours of all kinds of candidates names are flying around of course, some will be proved to be true some will not.