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Regional: A good time to be heard
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
In the next few months, High Prairie will be holding at least one important public meeting, and perhaps two or more.
In fact, the first meeting, with over $700,000 at stake, will happen next week, March 3 to be exact. Check advertising for exact time. This first meeting is to meet provincial requirements for what is called the Municipal Sustainability Plan, or MSP.
As said, there’s much money at stake. The Province of Alberta says it won’t deliver grants to any municipality unless the Plan is finished by March 31. The Town of High Prairie, like all other municipal governments in the province including the M.D. of Big Lakes, has had a couple of years to do this Plan.
It’s quite possible extensions will be granted. Even so, H.P.. council decided to hire special consultants to finish a version of the Plan by the deadline. They reasoned late last year as long as consultants are in High Prairie doing a governance review and helping hire a new Town Manager, they might as well help with the Plan too.
Next week’s meeting, similar to the Town Hall meeting held last summer in High Prairie, will be an exercise in looking at High Prairie’s future - what kind of town people want. Then, some kind of road map will have to be created to get there. Not exactly an easy job, which is probably why both the Town and M.D. have always shied away from such planning.
The M.D. has no road map to the future at all, although it is now creating a new Municipal Development Plan. This isn’t quite the same as a MSP, but has elements of the future in it as well.
High Prairie has a real Municipal Development Plan, put together with a professional consultant in 2008. Like many such plans, it has a place of honour "on the shelf,’’ along with other documents. These are all supposedly recognized as being important, but are rarely read if ever read by councillors.
Keep next week’s meeting in mind. Elements of the Town Hall meeting are already at work in other major plans now in process. Some elements might appear at next week’s Open House. Plus, the Open House is expected to narrow in on key "pillars’’ in the community.
Other future meetings? Yes. The Town Hall meeting last year raised the idea of two other meetings. One would be focussed on social planning in the community. Another would be a "Youth Town Hall’’ meeting.
While a youth meeting is obvious in its intent, social planning is more complicated.
Health services, planning for seniors, social programs and much more can fall under this umbrella.
As this is an election year, this is an excellent time for such meetings, to raise topics for the future, and for the public to make themselves heard.
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