Improving cooperation with Mountain View County council, communicating better with Sundre residents and seeing flood mitigation work in action are primary goals for Sundre council in 2014, according to Mayor Terry Leslie.
“West of Sundre, where the Red Deer River headwaters are, there have been changes over the years. There is more debris, more silt, more very large logs and trees that are making their way down the river channel,” explained Leslie.
“The bridge could be at risk if there is a buildup of logs and the water forces the logjam on that bridge. The provincial government is aware of those things.
“The ‘one in 100 years' of a flood no longer exists. We look at this snowpack right now – we could potentially be looking at even another flood, depending on rain, depending on environmental conditions. So we have to be proactive.”
County council and Sundre council members have approached the appropriate ministries to advocate for flood mitigation, he said.
Due to a recent cabinet shuffle, members of council are planning a trip to the Alberta legislature in Edmonton in the new year.
“There is a need, not to study, but to act. To get some shovels in the ground, to do some site specific dredging and protect that bridge,” he said.
“We need to go as two municipal councils, with the help of Joe Anglin as our MLA, and get in to see the minister and staff to talk about the action plan that there is. We have studied it, we have looked at it, now we need to get something done.”
The relationship between Sundre council and county council is essential, especially when it comes to advocating for flood mitigation, he noted.
“One of the biggest attitude changes that I think we're working toward is cooperation with county council,” he said.
“Our councils are going to work together. Our councils are interested in improving the community and that community is not going to be defined by lines on a map.”
A personal goal of Leslie's is to ensure that volunteers within the Sundre community feel valued. He is working to get to know more about groups and organizations in the community.
“A big goal is continuous improvement for programs and services and facilities so that the community continues to get better,” he said.
He also encourages people to help neighbours with snow removal, but says there are restrictions.
“I think we need to spend a little bit more time working with people in the community, encouraging the ‘helping your neighbour' idea, cooperating with folks who want to go out and do the right thing, rather than having folks feel like they're restricted because of bylaws and they don't want to break the law,” he said.
He believes a significant accomplishment of 2013 was how the community dealt with the flood.
“The biggest issue in the community was the flood. It happened on the day that my granddaughter was born actually and my daughter was evacuated from the hospital in less than 12 hours,” he said.
“The way the community came together, the way the town and the county worked together, the emergency services people came together. There was a clear and consistent attention to detail in the community that really made things go quite smoothly.”
The town's Municipal Development Plan and the Master Recreation Plan are other accomplishments of 2013.
As he has only been mayor for two months, he says his experience has been a “steep learning curve”.
“I thought I had some experience; I sat on council for 11 years, two terms as mayor, and I thought I had a sense of how things operate. I did, to an extent, but things have changed dramatically in the last 18 years since I sat on council,” he said.
The population has grown by half since he sat on council and the town has since purchased a water treatment plant.
“It's a wonderful time of the year. If we can be grateful for all the blessings we enjoy and go into the new year with a great attitude about how we will make life better for everybody around us.”
