Jasper council has full plate of priorities for 2009

Jasper town council has a number of priorities for 2009, and the following is an update based on last week’s regular council meeting on Feb. 3.

The Provincial Building at the corner of Hazel Avenue and Patricia Street is currently undergoing renovations by the province in order to relocate the court facilities to downstairs. The province is also going to lease 674 square metres of space in the building to the municipality for a projected annual lease fee of $30,000. 

If the Municipality could find this amount of space elsewhere in town, it would cost about $150,000 per year, according to the 2009 Capital Budget document. Occupying the new space will be Community and Family Services (CFS), Community Outreach Services (COS), Parent Link as well as Municipal Administration. Director of CFS Kathleen Waxer is “very excited” about the new space and the move “won’t happen fast enough” for her liking. 

“It will be a tremendous relief to have a place that we can call our own,” said Waxer. “It’s not going to be a youth drop-in centre, I don’t think, it’s not going to be big enough, but it will have the potential for lots of youth events in the evenings.” 

In addition to the interior space, Waxer also has an idea to turn the loading dock area in the back of the building into a garden or green space. “It’ll be a more restful and peaceful space,” she said.

Municipal administrators are also looking forward to the move. Consolidating the administrative services “will be very advantageous,” said municipal manager George Krefting. 

There will also be a working room for councillors and the mayor as well as a council chamber. Mayor Richard Ireland is looking forward to having a more formal facility. “If you look at most communities, I think a town hall is an important building and so a move in that direction is not a bad thing,” he said.

The mayor, Krefting and Waxer also hope that there will be some cost savings associated with the consolidation of services in the new facility. “It just seems logical to expect that we will have some administrative savings by proximity and certainly for the CFS component there will be some cost savings as well,” Ireland said.

Krefting said he hopes that they will all be in the new space by this time next year.

Another of council’s priorities for the new year is to develop a communications strategy for the municipality. One of the points that both Krefting and Ireland emphasized was consistency. That is, “consistency in signage, in correspondence, in posters, in advertising and all that kind of stuff” coming from the municipality, said Krefting. 

Director of Corporate and Legislative Services, Verne Balding, has been charged with developing the policy for council to review. For the mayor, this policy means “sort of embedding the notion of the importance of communication throughout the organization, so that when anybody speaks to anybody, they understand that one of things they’re doing is representing the municipality.”

“We are a visitor destination municipality and it is important that we communicate things in an effective and positive way,” said Ireland. “So, that’s not to say you try and hide anything, but just the manner of communication is important and that has to sink in right from the ground up.”

Although attempting to streamline a message may be looked at with skepticism, the mayor was adamant he doesn’t want the new policy to be construed as spin-doctoring. “The point is how do we communicate, rather than what it is we’re trying to say,” he said.

Council initiatives for 2009 include the Community Sustainability Plan, Affordable Housing, Activity Centre Renovations, Occupy the Provincial Building, rewrite the Policy Manual, develop a Communication Strategy, enhance Internal and External Relationships and develop a formal staffing succession plan.