WESTLOCK — There’s a trend emerging across the Westlock region: all three municipal leaders have the same two major 2020 highlights.
Like his peers in the Town of Westlock and Village of Clyde, Westlock County reeve Jared Stitsen listed regional collaboration and COVID-19 as the big things to emerge out of last year.
The new regulations and ongoing changes, Stitsen says, gave the county a bit of a headache in trying to adjust: “We’re totally thankful for all the residents, it hasn’t been easy. When you can’t come to the office to take care of business, it’s been very difficult but we appreciate everyone’s patience on that and we’re hoping for a healthy year going forward.”
As the pandemic was shuttering their meetings, the county was left without a CAO when Leo Ludwig went on health-related leave in May 2020 then resigned four months later. Interim CAO Rick McDonald was hired at the onset of Ludwig’s leave.
Councillors are still looking for a CAO and they hope to find one by the end of this month.
There have been many changes at the county last year, including Stitsen stepping in as reeve in the fall instead of Coun. Lou Hall. Mostly, however, it’s been a change of attitude, especially toward their neighbours.
“We’re on a great path working together,” Stitsen said about their relationship with the Town of Westlock. The two municipalities recently signed a water plant contract for the town to take over maintenance and inspection in the hamlets.
“This year was a huge building block in the direction we’re going together. That’s totally awesome.”
The CAOs from town, county and Village of Clyde have been meeting once a week: “We’ve seen great things come out of there. It’s cut down a lot of communication breakdown.” Tri-councils meet regularly, where they try to iron out things like economic development and emergency services regionally.
“As a region, there’s so many things we can do better if we do it together and we’re starting to see that. It’s taken a long time to get here, to build these relationships so you can work on these initiatives.”
Rural struggles
The rural municipality has some unique challenges of its own, starting with the provincial government’s proposal to change the formula for linear assessments. A measure that was intended to help a struggling oil and gas sector would’ve devastated rural municipalities financially, Westlock County among them.
Stitsen calls it an “ongoing issue,” since the review that suggested these changes will be reviewed again, and the results will come out some time in 2023, just before the UCP’s term ends. There is also no fix yet for unpaid property taxes in oil and gas, although the promise was to include it in this three-year review.
Flooding continues to be a problem, although this year the county is counting its successes on that file. First, Stitsen says they’re working on a “science-based solution” to fix the flood plain map on the Pembina River that’s caused residents some grief when they tried to put accessory buildings near their homesteads, or others to lose out on potential sales because of stringent development rules in the area.
“That was a lot of work by county residents. It wasn’t just council doing that, it was definitely a solution made from within,” Stitsen said. The county is using LiDAR to map the flood plain area, combined with photographs from the 1986 flood.
At Lebeaus Lake, it’s less science and more ditch-cleaning. A meeting organized by farmers, both downstream and upstream, revealed that everyone around the lake and everyone along the ditch that leads runoff water to Wiesel Creek was getting flooded. Under county guidance, farmers were given the OK to clear the ditch.
“We’ve come up with a solution with the farmers, we’re working with them. We’ve had great collaboration with them in trying to find a solution.”
A 30-year headache at Wiesel Creek, where the water was cutting in too close to the road, slowly damaging the structure and pretty awful driving conditions, had a simpler solution that council previously thought: instead of moving the creek, admin shored up the road and installed barriers.
Reelection: It seems like a lot of these initiatives when we started have taken a while to get up and running off the ground, and now we’re kind of seeing they’re coming to. It’s a good time, there’s definitely struggles but we’re in a great time working with the town and working with them.
The newly-elected reeve, who was also thankful to his predecessor for her three-year tenure, is planning on a re-election bid in October for the Division 2 seat.
