Kevin Hanson – Division 1
October 25 is Organization Meeting
This is the annual meeting where Council selects from amongst themselves for our various leadership, board, and committee roles. It gives Council a chance to review the past year with a critical eye, and make adjustments and tweaks that allow each Councillor to contribute in roles where they have specific interest and/or capability to govern, or want to develop further in their leadership.
We also place community members into board and committee positions. Last year saw some unfilled spots due to insufficient interest or volunteerism from the community. This year Administration was directed to cast a wider net. Hopefully, we were able to attract a larger slate of candidates from which Council will choose and place into various board and committee vacancies.
Council Priorities Update
The County has eight strategic objectives currently defined as:
- Create a culture of customer service
- Enhance transparency and communication
- Expand community service delivery
- Embrace partnerships
- Strengthen our financial resiliency
- Increase awareness of the County’s financial risk tolerance
- Ensure competitive engineering standards
- Guide the County’s growth pattern
Which together define long-term goals for the community over the next 15 to 20 years.
This past spring, during a facilitated workshop, Council determined nine top priorities that were relevant and aspirational in three strategic areas, and that we would focus on immediately:
Service Excellence
- Governance improvement
- Strategy refresh
- Service capacity review
- Organizational excellence strategy
Financial Health
- Long-term financial forecast
- “Soft” levies bylaw
Responsible Growth
- Solar farms on agricultural land strategy
- Area structure plan updates
- Economic development strategy
Further, our focus regarding advocacy efforts was confirmed as:
- CMRB relations
- First Nations relations
And important priorities to consider “next” included:
- Asset management plan/policy
- Agriculture land use strategy
- MDP/LUB review
- Potable water strategy
- Utility model
- CMRB Growth Plan implications
- Virtual County Hall
- Recreation cost sharing and business plans
- Development application analysis checklist
- Subtrade services review
- Advocacy strategy
I believe CAO Wandzura has raised the bar for executing strategic administrative projects and delivering results. Project Charters were created for each of the priority projects that defined key dimensions such as:
- Project objectives
- Project milestones and activities
- Resourcing requirements both in-house and for-hire
- Measurement of outcomes
Furthermore, to enable achieving the outcomes in the timeframe Council expects, the CAO provided Council with a $1.34 M price tag on the project work (mostly resourcing), of which $0.31 M was internally reallocated within this year’s budget, which left $1.03 M to come from the County’s Tax Stabilization Reserve as approved by resolution of Council on July 26th.
Utility Rates Seasonality
I informed the Executive Team that I will be bringing forward a notice of motion this fall to have Administration explore options for Council to consider a seasonality component in our water and wastewater rates schedules. As climate change and drought continue to challenge Western Canada, summer usage of water can vary significantly compared to winter usage and this is metered. There is not as much seasonal variation in wastewater usage, which is not metered. NOT having a single blanket factor relating the two rates could be a fairer “pay per use” system for utility rate payers across Rocky View. Master Rates are set in the spring, prior to finalizing tax rates.
Please e-mail me if you would like to be added to my contact list for e-mail and on-line communications – Kevin.Hanson@RockyView.ca or call 403.463.1166.
