When I think about Town of Sundre administration, it reminds me of the company my dad worked for for 38 years. Kodak, remember them?
Great innovators, held hundreds of patents, had great employees and invented digital photography. However by this time, management had gotten too big, too slow to react and they lost almost everything.
Last spring I read a story in the Round Up about how the town was going to attract more tourists to town because it would help the local economy. My question was, why spend taxpayers’ money to bring more people to town when we can’t get many of the almost 10,000 a day to stop due to inadequate parking, especially in the summer with all the RVs.
Last spring we made a suggestion to administration to contact the owners of four commercial lots in the downtown area (they have been for sale for years) and make them an offer: we will waive your property taxes for three to five years if the town can use them for parking.
This would allow the owners to keep the land, at no cost, and we would have lots of parking for our visitors at a reasonable cost to the town.
Administration said that’s not a bad idea, and would you like to be on a committee to look into this and other options? As a supporter of Sundre, I advised I would be glad to. It’s now early 2019 and I haven’t heard a word.
Over the summer we had mentioned this idea to the mayor and several councillors. I assume they mentioned it to administration again.
The mayor keeps saying we have to do something and all I can do is pass the info along.
In the fall we had an occasion to discuss the new wayfinding signs in town with administration as the West Country Centre has many out-of-town visitors to its jams and dances, and direction signs would be helpful.
Again, the question of parking came up. Again, the above idea was suggested. Again, that’s not a bad idea, we will look into it.
To my surprise when passing one of our local businesses a few weeks ago, they had a free parking sign on one of these lots just for their businesses. A couple of phone calls and they made a deal.
When I contacted the town office, it was oh, we know, but we have just been too busy. Too busy to make a couple of phone calls? You’ve had nine months. Maybe it might have worked, maybe not, but it should have been worth a try. Sounds like Kodak management — it has (gotten to be) too slow.
The town seems to have had time to look into the alley behind the municipal office and get a report and then take it to council, but no time to work on our parking.
Come on council, this is one of the most important issues to support a vibrant town. Get administration on this before another summer goes by.
Ray Sharp,
Sundre
