Mayor’s Award for arts group
At next year’s Volunteer Banquet, Arts Jasper will be presented with a Mayor’s Award for bringing fine and performing arts to Jasper for the last 40 years.
The arts group was nominated for the award by Linda Szkorupa and Angie Lemire, who wrote: “Arts Jasper is an integral part of the community. It started 40 years ago to support high school band programs [and] continued to provide arts/cultural events to the community ... a minimum of three times a year.
“Despite 40 years of achievements/contributions, Arts Jasper has never been recognized by the community.”
With Szkorupa and Lemire’s nomination in mind, council unanimously voted in favour of recognizing Arts Jasper with a Mayor’s Award next spring.
Budget talks next month
Council will publicly discuss the municipal budget for 2014 on Dec. 9 and 11.
Both meetings will be held at 7 p.m. in the boardroom of the Emergency Services Building.
On Dec. 9, the operations budgets for the Environmental Services and Administration departments will be presented and discussed.
The budgets for Culture and Recreation, Community and Family Services, as well as Protective Services will all be discussed Dec. 11.
Community members are encouraged to attend the meetings.
Emergency services agreement reached
Parks Canada will contribute 40 per cent of the cost of emergency services to the municipality for the next five years. In the past, the agency contributed 45 per cent, but that number was reduced to better represent the volume of services Parks is using, said Alice Lettner, director of finance.
“That percentage looks like less, but we’re still in the ballpark of what they had been paying,” she said, noting that over the five-year contract, Parks will also contribute $25,000 a year to cover the services provided to the province of B.C. through the municipality’s inter-provincial agreement.
“So traditionally they’ve been in the budget at around $170,000, and this year the contribution will be approximately $187,000.”
Lettner said she doesn’t expect the decrease in the overall percentage paid will have a negative effect on the municipality, and she also noted that there is a clause in the contract that would result in a review of the contract if the amount of services used over a three year average increases beyond five per cent.
Nicole Veerman
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