News | DrumhellerMail

New provincial regulation aids social housing projects

The Alberta Department of Municipal Affairs has legislation that could make it easier for municipalities and social housing authorities to tackle projects.
The Honourable Doug Griffiths, Minister of Municipal Affairs was in Drumheller on Friday, October 25 to meet with the Drumheller Housing Administration as well as Mayor Terry Yemen and Councillor Jay Garbutt, who is a Member of the Housing Authority. Minister Griffiths was also joined by MLA for Calgary-Fort Wayne Cao, MLA for Edmonton Gold Bar David Dorward and MLA for Edmonton Riverview and Chief Government Whip Steven Young.

The Drumheller Housing Administration had a number of visitors last Friday when Alberta Government MLAs came through to talk about some changes that affect Housing Authorities. At the meeting were (l-r) councillor Jay Garbutt, MLA David Doward, Minister of Municipal Affairs Doug Griffiths, Mayor Terry Yemen, MLA Steven Young, MLA Wayne Cao, Bob Sheddy of the Drumheller Housing Administration and CAO Ray Romanetz.

    Minister Griffiths said their visit has been a longtime coming following the flooding events of last spring, and this was one of the reasons for his visit. The other was to talk to housing authorities about some of the changes they are looking at.
   Minister Griffiths explains that currently projects undertaken by housing authorities put pressure on the whole municipality’s borrowing ability.
   “When a housing authority in a municipality wants to build affordable housing or senior housing, whatever their mandate is, they have to go through the municipality which has to borrow it on their behalf from the Capital Finance Authority,” explained Griffiths. “Now we have legislation that will separate that and we are working on the regulation. So now a housing authority will be able to borrow money directly from the Alberta Social Housing Corporation at the same interest rate. That way it won’t limit the borrowing capacity of the municipality.”
   This means that debt from housing projects won’t count against a municipality’s borrowing limits.
   “In lots of municipalities, especially the small ones, they have to ask the question, ‘do we build a seniors complex, or affordable housing, or do we fix the arena or pave the streets?’ It becomes a challenge. So just by peeling the housing out we can still do these projects in communities and still leave the municipalities with their tasks at hand,” said Griffiths.
   The Drumheller Housing Administration manages Sandstone Manor as well as community housing units in the Huntington Hills and Greentree areas.
   Jay Garbutt of the Drumheller Housing Administration says currently there are no plans right now for expansion or renovation, owing to cuts to new housing projects by the province. It recently completed a number of renovations making many of the units more efficient, thanks to grants from the federal government.
   The provincial delegation also met with the Drumheller Kinsmen to present a $40,000 grant to build a new playground at Greentree Park. For more details, see Page 19 of this edition of The Drumheller Mail.

Drumheller brings home two prestigious Alto Awards

Drumheller is on top of the Alberta tourism world after the annual Alto Awards on Monday night in Banff.
Drumheller was nominated for the Tourism Community of the Year Award alongside the Red Deer Centennial.

Drumheller was the recipient of two Alto Awards on Monday. Drumheller won the Tourism Community of the Year Award and the Canadian Badlands Passion Play won the Alberta Pride Award. Accepting the awards were Shelley Rymal, Leanna Mohan (left), Chris Curtis, Linda Digby, Vance Neudorf, LaVerne Erickson, Mike Dooley, Marty Eberth, and Bob Cromwell.

    The Canadian Badlands Passion Play, who has been nominated numerous times over the years, was running against the Calgary Stampede and the Sinister 7 Ultra of Blairmore for the Alberta Pride Award.
   Both Drumheller and the Passion Play won their respective categories.
   “The Passion Play won the Alberta Pride Award and we (Drumheller as a whole) won what is basically the academy award for best picture. It’s great,” said Chris Curtis, executive director of Travel Drumheller. “It was a real uplifting thing last night. Everyone was really stoked.”
   The Tourism Community of the Year Award is designed to acknowledge a collective and successful effort on the part of a community to work together to promote tourism.
   The Alberta Pride is meant to recognize a business or organization that captures the essence of the Alberta experience.
   Tourism in Drumheller, despite the flooding in late June was strong this year, especially in late July and through August. Several tourism operators even saw record numbers during the long weekends.
   The Passion Play was hit hard initially by the flood. Their first weekend, which started soon after the flood, saw some of their lowest attendance in a decade. Ticket sales went cold during the Passion Play’s prime selling time.
   Attendance bounced back the second weekend of the play to on par with, if not slightly higher than, previous years.
   Curtis credits teammwork between operators.
   “It’s really the hard work of all the operators. It was a really exhilarating experience felt by a whole team. We were so pumped last (Monday) night,” said Curtis.

Good old fashioned Canadian Halloween

When life gives you snow, you make snowmen, even if it's almost Halloween. The Walsh family, with Coyne and Opal pictured here, took advantage of the pre-Halloween snow to make a snow-jack o' lantern. On Sunday, the Valley was buried in the first snowfall of winter, but luckily predictions say things will warm up in time for the weekend.

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