Rural Municipalities of Alberta Association (RMA) officials hope to meet with premier-designate Jason Kenney soon to discuss pressing issues and concerns facing rural Alberta, says Al Kemmere.
The president of RMA and a Mountain View County councillor, Kemmere and his fellow board members met Thursday to map out plans for working with the new United Conservative Party government.
“We are going to be requesting as soon as feasibly possible to have a meeting with him,” said Kemmere. “We are trying to find ways of engaging with the premier and ministers once they are appointed to their offices.”
The RMA represents 69 rural municipalities, including Mountain View and Red Deer counties.
The RMA has identified five key priority issues facing rural Alberta, priorities the association would like the new government to consider and address moving forward.
Those priorities are long-term predictable municipal funding, inter-municipal collaboration, infrastructure and transportation, environmental stewardship, and the importance of rural municipalities to the province’s economic and social success.
“The priorities are not changing,” said Kemmere. “They have been our priorities whomever got elected. We are now in the process of taking those priorities to the new MLAs so that everybody knows what they are.”
For one, rural municipalities will need and require adequate provincial funding to support vital infrastructure, he said.
“Roads and bridges are key for us and that’s where a lot of our funding requests come,” he said. “There is always the need to have adequate roads and bridges so that the resources that drive the provincial revenues can still have their access points.
“We need to make sure there is funding in place to look after that.”
Going forward the association plans to continue working with MLAs of both parties, he said.
“We want to continue the relationships with the MLAs who are incumbents, but also to push forward to establish new relationships and hopefully keep them informed as much as possible with the new MLAs on our priorities,” he said.
“RMA looks forward to the opportunities to work with a new government and a new cabinet to support strong, vibrant rural communities.
“A new cohort of ministers and MLAs will provide a great opportunity to share information about what matters to Alberta’s rural municipalities, and what it takes to ensure that rural communities are sustainable in the future.”
Meanwhile, Mountain View County reeve Bruce Beattie says having MLAs Jason Nixon (Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre) and Nathan Cooper (Olds-Didsury-Three Hill) on the government side of the legislature should be beneficial to the district.
“I think it is a positive because we will have strong representatives in government from our two MLAs,” he said. “We haven’t had government MLAs in our area for some time. They have been in Opposition.
“Jason has done a very good job for us when he was in Opposition and I expect that he will do just as well or even better in government. I’m looking forward to working with the new government.
“We will have good, strong representation with the provincial government.”
Beattie is the chairman of Mountain View Seniors' Housing, which operates seniors' housing facilities across the district. He says he hopes the organization will have a good working relationship with the new government.
The Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) represents towns across the province, including in this region.
The association says key issues it hopes the new provincial government will address include improving resources for policing services, providing adequate infrastructure funding, and giving municipalities a fair share of cannabis revenues.
“These topics should not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention as AUMA has been advocating on these issues for quite some time,” said Barry Morishita, association president.
“Municipalities are the boots on the ground. It is in our communities where things happen and the only way to build a strong Alberta is to have strong communities.”
