Sundre's council discussed last week a letter from Mountain View County Reeve Bruce Beattie, who reminded the municipality that the interim memorandum of agreement for recreational and cultural funding expires at the end of this month.
"Once the agreement expires there will be no mechanism in place for the county to continue payments under that agreement," he wrote.
Coun. Cheri Funke inquired whether county officials would be willing to negotiate the Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework in tandem with ongoing discussions to mediate Sundre's appeal regarding the county's intent to re-designate land immediately west of town for gravel extraction.
"How is that going to work?" Funke asked during the Dec. 4 meeting.
Administrator Linda Nelson said she had met with her county counterparts the week before specifically to discuss this correspondence.
"Just for clarification, Mountain View County administration made it very, very clear to me that there is money in the budget to continue supporting the memorandum that is currently in place," Nelson told council.
Although two separate issues, county officials did express a desire to settle the land-use appeal process before moving forward with the new funding agreement, she said.
"I don't believe they intend to put us at any risk, financially. There's more discussion to be had, but I'm relatively certain that we can move forward."
However, since the appeal could potentially take many months to resolve, Coun. Richard Warnock inquired whether the county could be asked in writing to consider engaging in preliminary discussions about funding shared services to avoid starting from scratch six months from now.
"We've already started a list," said Nelson. "So yes, that's certainly doable."
Council then carried a motion to accept the reeve's letter as information.
"We're optimistic that we'll move ahead," said Mayor Terry Leslie.
"These are details that we have to sort out."
The county's administrator, Tony Martens, told the Round Up last week that until an agreement is in place, there is no legal mechanism for the county to provide funding. However, the first payment is not due until March, leaving room for an opportunity to resolve the matter by then, he said.
The Round Up also contacted the reeve, who said the county has indicated its willingness to increase funding by 40 per cent in the coming year, but that an agreement must first be reached.
"We want to continue to support culture and recreation in the Town of Sundre ó this serves our residents, we recognize that ó but we need something in place to allow us to continue to do that," said Beattie, adding that will be difficult to do at the same time as the land use re-designation appeal process.
The county will continue to pursue further discussions with the town, and the reeve is hopeful a mutually beneficial solution can be reached before the end of March.
"We look forward to moving forward and finalizing the Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework agreement and sub-agreements, in particular, the shared services agreement which would enable the county to continue funding recreation, cultural, and library services," the reeve wrote in his letter to Sundre's council.
