A new master agreement signed between Mountain View County and the Town of Olds is an important step for both municipalities and a good example of inter-municipal cooperation, says MVC division 7 councillor Al Kemmere.
“This is a real milestone by signing this agreement today,” said Kemmere during the official signing of the agreement at a ceremony on Jan. 25. “There has been a lot of work that has gone into it and it's all in the spirit of building stronger communities. This shows that we can work together and how we can work together. It's worked well and it's positive. We looked for local solutions.”
Kemmere, who spoke on behalf of MVC at the ceremony at the county office, also commended administration staff of both the Town of Olds and Mountain View County for their work on bringing the new agreement to fruition.
The master agreement sets out the conditions for future shared service agreements and is expected to lead to the development of a joint growth strategy that promotes sustainability.
The purpose of the agreement, and the sub-agreements that will come from it, is to “better serve and provide quality of life to the residents of the Town of Olds and Mountain View County by ensuring that growth management, land use planning, programs and services are effectively, efficiently and economically delivered and are reasonably available to them.”
Under the agreement, the municipalities agree to a number of cooperative measures, including that “municipalities agree to provide access to municipal facilities, programs and services to each other's residents in a manner that does not discriminate between them.”
The county will be conducting negotiations with Didsbury, Carstairs, Sundre and Cremona with the aim of developing inter-municipal cooperation master agreements similar to the one signed with Olds.
Meanwhile, Mountain View County council has passed a motion instructing administration to make an application though the Alberta Community Grant Program (ACP) to help cover the expenses associated with ongoing memorandum of agreement negotiations with other area urban municipalities.
The motion was passed at the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
“We are only applying for the grant to cover the cost of negotiating with four of our partner municipalities as the Olds agreement is completed and provisions of the grant do not cover projects that have been completed,” CAO Tony Martens said in a briefing note to council.
“The cost to bring us to the point we are with the Town of Olds is $58,500. This includes travel and consultant costs. Based on this cost and the experiences we have with both Olds and Sundre, administration believes the others will cost between $45,000 and $50,000. We will base our funding application on $50,000 per municipality for a total of $200,000.”
Determining the exact costs of each MOA negotiation depends on a number of factors, including the number of issues identified in each municipality, representatives appointed to the committee, and willingness of the negotiation committee members to commit time through the process, council heard.
"There has been a lot of work that has gone into it and it's all in the spirit of building stronger communities."Al KemmereMVC councillor
