ELK POINT — Elk Point council is changing how it tackles some of the bigger conversations at the council table, while also joining neighbouring municipalities in a coordinated strategic planning process.

At its Aug. 24 meeting, council approved participating in a joint Request for Proposal process to find a consultant to help municipalities develop or refresh their strategic plans.

The County of St. Paul will lead the procurement process, an approach intended to reduce duplication and potentially lower consulting costs by having participating municipalities hire through one coordinated RFP.

But this isn’t one big regional strategic plan.

Each municipality will still go through its own planning process, set its own priorities and ultimately adopt its own plan.

The scope of work is quite explicit on that point, stating the project “does not and should not imply amalgamation at any state or stage.”

For Elk Point, the work will focus on figuring out where council wants to go over its current term and ensuring those priorities align with the Town’s financial and operational reality.

The consultant would review budgets, capital plans, infrastructure commitments, services and administrative capacity before working directly with council on priorities, desired outcomes and implementation.

The planning process is also expected to look at the realities municipalities are already facing together.

Elk Point and its neighbours share or collaborate on several services, including fire protection, waste management, recreation, airport management, economic development and occupational health and safety. Those relationships would be considered where they affect municipal priorities or obligations.

Once the individual municipal planning sessions are finished, the consultant would facilitate a regional alignment session to identify shared pressures and potential priorities.

Each council would still need to agree to and adopt any shared direction.

And council hasn’t written a cheque yet.

The Aug. 24 approval only allows the coordinated RFP to move ahead. The consultant recommendation, project cost and final participation details will return to Elk Point council before a contract is awarded.

More time for the conversations that don’t fit into 15 minutes

The strategic planning decision comes as Elk Point is also formalizing another way for council to dig deeper into municipal issues.

Council gave third reading to Bylaw 923/26, the Council and Committee Procedures Bylaw, which formally establishes a Committee of the Whole.

All members of council will sit on the committee, with meetings generally planned for the third Monday of the month at the Seniors Centre when there is business to discuss.

The idea is fairly simple: not every conversation fits neatly into a regular council meeting.

Council discussed using Committee of the Whole for issues that need more time, including opportunities to sit down with community groups and organizations for broader discussions rather than trying to squeeze everything into a traditional delegation.

“There’s some of those bigger conversations that need to happen,” Mayor Wanda Cochrane said during the discussion.

Council also talked about using the format to bring several organizations into the same room when they’re dealing with related issues.

The committee can spend more time discussing and exploring those topics, but it doesn’t replace the regular council table. Council still needs to make formal decisions.

Planning individually, talking regionally

The two decisions fit together particularly well considering how many of Elk Point’s files now extend beyond the Town boundary.

In the same Aug. 24 meeting alone, council dealt with regional transportation, a proposed multipurpose recreation facility and several regional committee reports.

The strategic planning process is designed to recognize that reality without taking decision-making away from individual municipalities.

The project scope says planning must consider affordability, infrastructure obligations, service expectations, administrative capacity and the trade-offs that come with setting priorities.

That’s important because a strategic plan can have all the big ideas in the world, but eventually someone has to figure out who is doing the work and how it’s being paid for.

For Elk Point, the next step is to see what comes back through the joint RFP.

And with Committee of the Whole now part of the council’s regular toolbox, there will also be a little more room at home for conversations that need more time than a spot on the agenda.