CARSTAIRS - The Town of Carstairs will have a new fire safety code program after council approved the motion at its regular council meeting on Nov. 25.
"This is a new program," said CAO Carl McDonnell. "Rob McKay from our planning and development department went through and became a safety code officer over the summer. He's developed a fire safety program quite similar to Olds'. He's working with the fellows from Olds."
McDonnell said McKay will come in and do the pre-inspection on the commercial and industrial buildings, do safety code inspections, and investigations as well in the case of a fire.
"The goal is to have a fire safety plan for all new builds whether it's residential, commercial or industrial," he said. "For existing businesses, he would go through once a year and do a fire inspection for the property owners."
In other council news, council approved a request by the Carstairs Chamber of Commerce for fireworks as well as a road closure on Dec. 6 both for the Crazy Carstairs Christmas event. The road being closed is 10th Avenue (main street) from Centre Street to Nanton Street from 5:30 to 10 p.m.
Council received a presentation from the Carstairs Public Library on its budget. Presenting were Erick Beresford, board chair, and Megan Ginther, library manager.
Council approved a number of small changes on a couple of bylaws including the land use amendment regarding signs.
"If someone has offensive wording on their sign then we can order them to take it down," he said.
The other bylaws that saw updates were the interest penalty on unpaid receivables bylaw and the assessor bylaw, to bring them more in line with the new municipal government act, said McDonnell.
McDonnell said that he expects they will bring back the 2019 budget as the interim 2020 operating budget at the next regular council meeting on Dec. 9.
"Once we see what some of the provincial budget stuff is we'll be able to finalize our budget," he said. "They'll have their budget out in April 2020. We'll have to see if it'll affect us more."
