Well, it seems like spring has arrived – and it looks as though the ice is finally melting on the lake!
For those of you clamoring to get boats out, we have been in contact with the Western Irrigation District (WID) and they let us know that they are delayed in their raising of the lake water. If you’ve got any questions, please give them a call.
With the beautiful weather we had this past weekend, I know many residents were excited to get outside and enjoy some outdoor activities. I am pleased to tell you that recreation in our community is really important to your Council and we have placed a significant priority on it in both our Strategic Plan and our recent 2018 Budget review. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read more about the budget on our website. While we wanted to add things residents said they wanted, we were also conscious of the tax burden and so I am very pleased we were able to bring some relief to residents by reducing the property tax requirement increase down to 0.9%.
While we just finished the 2018 review, the task of setting a four year budget is on the horizon. We know we’ve got some challenges facing us, but as you know, we are committed to finding savings wherever possible and we are going to do the best we can for you.
When the budget comes forward, we will be looking for your input (more details on that to come). In the meantime, we are starting another new initiative – Amazing Chestermere. We plan to have a community roundtable to get our heads together and discuss what we can do to really make Chestermere amazing. Keep an eye out for details on that soon – we’d love to see you there.
This is just a little taste of all we have going on. Recently, we’ve also been looking at our long term growth and future development, learning more about our utilities (we toured Lift Station 13 in April), meeting with the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board, looking into creating an annual report and are in the process of finalizing our search for a permanent City manager.
We’d be happy to talk with you about any of these topics so please drop us a line or come by and see us! We’re here to work for you.
Ps. Thank you to everyone who expressed their opinions by taking the cannabis legalization survey. We know this is an important issue for our community and look forward to digging into the results of the survey and looking at what our options are for local regulations. You can follow updates about the process at www.chestermere.ca/legalization.
