CARSTAIRS - At the regular council meeting on March 26, Carstairs council passed a borrowing bylaw to allow the town to borrow for street improvement tenders.
"We tendered out our projects already for the street improvement," said CAO Carl McDonnell. "What we're looking at is two years of work in one. We did it that way to get better pricing.
"We're budgeting for a $2-million road project using $1 million in grant funding and borrowing $1 million this year and paying that back in the 2019 budget."
McDonnell said they have several road projects planned for the next year including 11th Avenue South from Gough Road to Idaho Street. The project contract was awarded to ConSite Construction Ltd from Calgary.
In other council news, council received a delegation from auditor Jeff Faupel of Endeavored Chartered Accountants.
"The auditors were there and went through the audit," said McDonnell. "We talked about where the town is financially and they were happy with the books and where we're sitting, so that was positive."
Council amended the town's land use bylaw to make a change to the permitted uses in the light industrial district.
"In our light industrial district, primarily along the railroad tracks on 9th Avenue, it's (light industrial) but there is some interest in commercial businesses going along there," said McDonnell. "Under the current land use bylaw they couldn't go. Now a commercial (C2) business is allowed in that industrial area.
"So anything permitted under a C2 permit is now permitted under (light industrial). If someone wants to put a restaurant in, or a retail shop, they can put it in that district now."
Council reviewed the sanding, plowing and snow removal policy and made a change to add public facilities to the priority list of primary roads.
Council also set the terms of reference for the Carstairs Community Development and Economic Partnership.
"It's a committee that's been in hiatus for a while but we're reviving them," said McDonnell. "The change will be that it used to be two-year terms, now it's three-year terms. Where we used to have two positions on the committee for youth, we've changed residents from four to six and those include youth. There's no point in separating the two out."
The town released the Town of Carstairs 2017 Internal Annual Report which summarizes the five council standing committees and their goals and how they performed.
