Following is Town of High Prairie Mayor Linda Cox’s report for July 11-19:

July 11, I attended the recreation board meeting. Summer maintenance and painting is continuing at the Sports Palace and Gordon Buchanan Recreation Centre. Minor baseball and slo-pitch is active at Jaycee Park. There is a boxing tournament Aug. 17 at the Sports Palace. This is the same day as the St. Andrew’s Grad at the GBRC so parking could be an issue on that day.

Washroom renovations in the Sports Palace were discussed and the decision was made to move ahead with complete redoing of the women’s washroom. Facility manager, Rick Dumont, will use his staff to tear out the partitions, fixtures and flooring in preparation for the rebuild. He will contract day labour for the reconstruction, flooring, painting and fixture installation with an anticipated finish date of Sept. 15. Local suppliers and trades will be used as much as possible.

The Aquatic Centre has continued to increase their lesson offerings for private, semi-private and group lessons.
For private lessons, the student’s individual needs are assessed and matched with an instructor. There have been a number of repeat customers for this type of instruction, both adult and children.

The aquatic facility managers continue to explore possible cost savings and revenue generation through more efficient maintenance and more program offerings.
Health Community Partnership Team
July 13, I attended the High Prairie Community Partnership Team meeting.

We now have seven doctors in our community and one more is coming in December/January. Recruitment is proceeding for nurse practitioners, and eventually other members of the inter-professional team that will be working to support physicians from both clinics.

A presentation from Addiction and Mental Health Services was received. Irene Gladue, manager, from Grande Prairie and Beth Toews, mental health therapist, from High Prairie, were available to answer questions. There is no in-person psychiatry service in High Prairie; all service is provided by tele-psychiatry with some clients traveling outside the community for this service.

There is a psychiatrist in Peace River and the wait time for an in-person appointment is six months.

The tele-psychiatry service, available in High Prairie, has a wait time of two weeks. This is because the tele-psychiatry service is staffed by psychiatrists from throughout Alberta.

Psychiatrists in Alberta focus on medication management and referral to therapy, which is provided by psychologists, psychiatric nurses and social workers. There are approximately 12 positions devoted to Mental Health and Addiction working out of the High Prairie office, but even with this amount of staff, there is an eight-week wait list for the adult short-term program.

Grande Prairie also has an eight-week wait period and Peace River six weeks. High Level is piloting a project for tele-therapy and we will be updated as results become available.

In 2013, High Prairie’s emergency department visit rate for mental and behavioural discords was higher than the provincial ED visit rate per 100,000 population: 1,342 vs 633 AB.
Town, county meet
July 18, I, with Councillors Brian Panasiuk and Debbie Rose, attended the Inter-municipal Meeting at the Big Lakes County Office. These meetings are held as needed to discuss issues that impact both the town and county.

Most of the discussion this time was regarding the Tolko FMA. Both municipalities have provided letters of support for Tolko in their efforts to continue leasing the High Prairie and area FMA. We have also met with Tolko Industries management and discussed their plans for the mill re-opening.

Our discussion at the Inter-municipal meeting dealt with the next steps and what should they be. It was decided that we would meet with MLA Danielle Larivee for her input and tailor our actions to her recommendations.

Also on the agenda:

* The old hospital site – town council has written again to the Government of Alberta requesting the land be transferred at no cost back to the Town;

* Physician recruitment – a discussion regarding the outcome of the town’s public meeting with Alberta Health Services;

* The Regional Water Project – a discussion on the need for a formal agreement between the partners before the county can access grants from the Alberta government;

* Inter-municipal Development Plan, which will formalize development requirements on lands adjacent to the town and county.