Third-term Mountain View County councillor Al Kemmere says he will seek re-election in the October municipal vote.
“I've enjoyed doing what I've been doing for the last nine years, so I plan to put my name on the ballot again this year,” said Kemmere, who is the Division 7 councillor.
“I want to try to continue making Mountain View County as strong a county as it is. We are always going to try to improve our roads and our road system and our service levels and the likes of that. I want to bring my experience to the table and keep moving forward.”
More than a dozen people attended Kemmere's spring open house at the Colburn Hall on April 22.
The open house was one of seven held by MVC councillors over the past three weeks to speak with constituents and to outline county plans.
Topics discussed during Kemmere's meeting included recently-announced upgrades to the Highway 2-27 intersection, road maintenance in the division and county, regravelling of county roads and taxes.
Kemmere explained that he supported the county's recent 1.5 per cent tax increase because it was needed, in part, to make up for provincial government cutbacks.
“If you don't try to keep up with it you can fall behind,” he said. “The last three years we've been trying to build efficiencies into the operations as much as possible to keep up with inflation.
“We got to the point this year, with the bridge funding cutback from the province and looking at implementing some higher service levels, that we decided this year that in order to be planning for the future we would have to go with this tax increase.”
The elimination of local bridge funding in the recent provincial budget means the county will have to spend more on upkeep, maintenance and replacement of the county's 250 bridges, he said.
“That hurts,” he said. “Some of our bridges are 50 years old or older.”
MVC will spend $1.8 million on regravelling and $3.5 million on chip sealing roads in the municipality this year, he said.
Kemmere spoke about MVC's ongoing work on a new summer road plan, about the Big Prairie Bridge project, and about upgrades to the Acme Road now underway.
He also discussed the ongoing work to develop a new area structure plan for the Highway 2-27 industrial park, saying an open house is tentatively scheduled for June 12.
“When council redid the municipal development plan, it meant that the area structure plan that was in place there needed to be reviewed,” he said. “We are going through that process now.”
The county's new proposed aggregate extraction bylaw was also discussed, with Kemmere explaining that the public hearing into the bylaw will resume in August.
Kemmere said he believes upgrades to the Highway 2-27 intersection will improve driver safety.
