Even though it’s getting really cold now, I’m thankful that our winter has been relatively mild so far as I’ve spent the last few weeks doing some travelling to advocate for Chestermere.
First, Deputy Mayor Burness and I met with the Minister of Municipal Affairs to determine our legislated options for CUI. While we were meeting with the Minister, the CUI Transitional team has been inquiring about partnerships and exploring the possibilities of outsourcing services. Even though it may seem quiet to residents, let me assure you that we are hard at work exploring every option to provide utility services at reasonable rates.
I was also out of town recently to attend the Mid-Sized Cities Mayors & CAOs Caucus that was hosted in Cochrane. This group is made up of leaders from 22 communities (including ourselves, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, and Spruce Grove) and represents close to a million Albertans.
At our meeting, we had all four provincial political party leaders come in to present to our group. This gave us an opportunity to ask them how their parties would work with mid-sized cities on consistent municipal funding, economic diversification, transportation and community safety. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to ask Premier Notley how her party plans to create equitable solutions to the policing system and funding.
I’ve also been out to many Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB) meetings in the last several weeks. We are one year in to the CMRB discussions and have set a good foundation. We are now starting to get into the core of the conversations about how we work together as a region. My hope for this year is that we can make some progress on identifying how we do a better job of coming together to collectively plan for development and services in our region.
Finally, I hope you have already heard that we are exploring a regional transit connection to the new MAX bus line at East Hills. I am very encouraged by the initial discussions with the City of Calgary and we hope to have some progress on that soon.
While I am very proud to represent our community on the road, it’s always great to come home to Chestermere and I look forward to seeing you more in the next few weeks.
Council has also been hard at work here at home and I’m pleased to let you know we have a new Economic Incentive Bylaw that is designed to stimulate specific types of growth, the Seniors Task Force is up and running and Lake Use Management Plan consultations with the community are well underway. Please check our website or give me a shout if you’re interested in knowing more about these topics.
Sincerely,
Mayor Chalmers
