Council Overview
Information from Drumheller
Town Council Regular Meeting
Monday, June 22, 2020
Mayor Heather Colberg thanked everyone who came out for the Father’s Day Drive-by Parade and congratulated all the graduates in the valley finishing up a very different school year.
She also noted the Canada Day Parade has been cancelled.
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Council adopted the minutes from the June 8 Regular Council Meeting.
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Council approved its summer meeting schedule, cancelling the Committee of the Whole Meetings for the remainder of June, July, and August.
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The Flood Mitigation and Climate Change Office presented its financial report as well as its semi-annual report. Bob Jenkins presented the financial report. He noted this is a six-year project and council has so far adopted the first year of budgeting. The major funding for the project is from the federal government of $22 million of the approximately $55 million project. $20 million comes from the province for land acquisition and a further $6.6 million from the Community Resiliency program. The Town of Drumheller’s cash contribution is $5 million, plus in-kind expense. The budget for 2020 is about $20 million and so far 1.411 million has been expensed. He noted as the program progresses, there will need to be interim borrowing as the federal grant money is only released as the project develops.
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Chief Flood Mitigation and Resiliency Officer Darwin Durnie presented the semi-annual report. The office was busy in the first half of the year working on a number of fronts from finance to regulatory and governance, convenience capacity, structural measures, and updating the Municipal Emergency plan. They have also initiated its communication and community engagement.
Looking forward to the remainder of the year, they will work on stockpiling rip rap and hardening beams, looking at stormwater management utility relocation and protection, work on flood inundation maps, securing fill, and work on the hoodoo and centennial park berms. It will also focus on its passive warning system and continued work on its urban tree strategy and finish up Newcastle beach, and also creating more boat launch areas.
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Council approved a motion to approve the renaming of the portion on 1st Avenue West from Centre Street West to 2nd Street West as Riverside Drive West.
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Director of Infrastructure Services, Dave Brett, brought forward a Request for Decision for some changes to the See Click Fix, Town of Drumheller app. There are concerns about a number of unacceptable submissions targeting administration and Drumheller Town Council. It provided some recommendations for council to consider, including changing some privacy settings and restricting the ability to comment on other submissions. Some categories will remain completely private such as COVID-19. They also suggested streamlining the number of categories to field complaints.
The final recommendation is looking at different ways to remove the ability of residents to make anonymous submissions. This is to create accountability for users of the apps. Options include; completely removing the ability for users to make anonymous submissions; asking for the name and contact details as part of the submission. This would be compulsory, but not visible to the public, but visible to staff and; or removing “guest” submission. This allows a person to post anonymous, but they would have to register with the app. This information could only be accessible to See Click Fix and could only be accessed by following the company’s terms and conditions. Administration took the council’s suggestions and will continue to work on a solution.
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Mr. Brett offers a proposal that would allow the town to open the spray park July 2. The area would be fenced off and there would only be 64 people allowed in the spray park, with hourly scheduled cleaning. This comes at an expense of $2,000 a week for staffing to open 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. daily.
Complete minutes from council meetings can be found at
www.drumheller.ca once they have been adopted.
