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Tom Zariski outlines Drumheller vision

    Incumbent Drumheller Town Councillor Tom Zariski has a vision of what needs to happen for Drumheller to continue to thrive.  
    The most pressing issue facing Drumheller is bringing more people and businesses to the Valley.
    “We need to increase our revenues if we want to maintain our quality of services and infrastructure. Right now, the way we’re doing it only has a finite amount of money,” said Zariski. “We need economic development to pay off what we need, expand, develop, and maintain.”
    Bringing in more residents and businesses would help keep taxes from rising, argues Zariski.
    “If people want the same level of service, we have to increase revenues other ways, because we’re maxed out with taxes,” said Zariski.
    Zariski also intends to pursue international tourism.
    “We do a wonderful job with tourism. We’re very well-known in the province and Western Canada, but we should be looking internationally,” said Zariski.
    Zariski was first elected to the Drumheller Town Council in 2010.  Prior to that, he served as the principal for Drumheller Composite High School from 1999 until his retirement in 2010.
    He is active in the community, serving on a number of boards, including as president of the Royal Tyrrell Cooperating Society, founder and president of the Drumheller Community Golf Association,  and as co-founder and president of the Drumheller Community Football Association.
    On Council, Zariski worked with the Drumheller and District Seniors Foundation, Valley Bus Society, Heritage Inventory, BCF Design Committee, and RCMP liaison.
    Zariski encourages residents to head to the polls on October 21. 
     “I feel I am much more capable, effective, and knowledgeable than I was three years ago” said Zariski. “I’ve worked to build a community and make it better.”


Well, this is embarrassing

Mark Lewandowski provided this photo from a producer in the Rosebud area and insists it is not a fake.  
In his conversation with the operator, at one point the driver noticed a coyote in the field as he was working.  
On the next pass, he saw this peculiar site and snapped the picture.
By the next time around, the coyote was gone.
The photo has erupted vigorous discussion as to whether it is real, but Lewandowski insists the story comes right from the farmer’s mouth.

 

County passes Wheatland East School re-designation

    Golden Hills School Division passed a major milestone in realizing its goal for a new Wheatland East School.  
    On August 29, Wheatland County held a public meeting into the re-designation of a parcel of land selected to be a new regional school in the area to serve surrounding communities.
    In the end, Wheatland Council voted almost unanimously in favour to re-designate the land on second reading.
    “That means we're into subdivision now,” said Golden Hills Superintendent Bevan Daverne.
    “The public hearing was obviously a significant and major step forward. We still have work to do with subdivision, but certainly the re-designation hearing was a big a step in the right direction.”
    This is not the first time Golden Hills has requested Wheatland County re-designate a site for a school in the eastern part of the county.
    “There certainly were some differences between this hearing and the one we had almost three years ago. There are an awful lot of parents who have come out in support of the new consolidated school. That was pretty clear in the public hearing,” said Daverne. “I think parents have had enough time to work through the information, look at options.”
     The school division has been working on a solution to the schooling situation in this part of Wheatland for a number of years. Through 2012 the division made a concerted effort to collect as much information on the wants, needs and opinions of families in the area, and what options could serve the students best.
    “We have taken a ton of time, we went through a whole bunch of pre-work in a whole bunch of areas to make sure we were able to answer questions and able to do a good job providing people with the information they needed in order to make a decision, if this was something they wanted to support,” said Daverne.
    With the re-designation complete, the division and communities are ready to move on to the next step.
    “The message we heard from parents is we really need to get going on this and the county’s support was music to their ears,” he said. “It was what we wanted to hear, now we are in a school design process and a subdivision process and we’re anxious to get going ahead."


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