Town and M.D. decide joint council meeting topics

The Town of Bonnyville and M.D. have chosen the issues they’ll discuss at their joint council meeting next Monday.

The town has chosen to bring forward the issues of a new swimming pool, a fine arts theatre, the Bonnyville library, economic development, the Jesse Lake walking trail, and airport expansion.

The M.D. will talk about the proposed rec park west of Bonnyville, and the Chamber of Commerce.

“The reason for the joint council meeting is to meet and greet, get together and see where the other parties are. We don’t decide directions or things like that, we jointly talk about it. Where are we at positionally?” said Bonnyville mayor Gene Sobolewski.

“Say, for example, the aquatics. We know we have a committee working on that, we know what we’ve got in our budget, we want to see how well that reconciles with the direction the M.D. is going with that. It’s the same thing with the Library and also the airport. Economic development: there some initiatives and seeing if there’s any interest in joining or pursuing that.

“The trail since there is a joint jurisdiction on that existing trail that we’ve got now. The town is working with Alberta Environment and Parks to try to figure out what to can do in terms of approvals, because it’s a very established, and have discussions with the M.D. since that portion of the trail resides in the M.D. So it’s these kinds of things that we talk about and see where are we at, what we can do, what we can’t do, what’s the appetite, and then we allow CAO’s and councils to come up with individual motions,” said Sobolewski.

Sobolewski said they try to hold these meetings quarterly when they can.