Community Vision/BVI/MSP

Did the acronyms in the title intrigue you? Peace River has a lot going on and we're hoping that Peace River and area residents will become active in each of them!

Here's one: The Business Vitality Initiative (BVI) "measures the business-friendliness of your community, compares the results to other communities, helps you come up with strategies for improvement and launches your community into action" (CIEL website).

In July, I attended the Rural Matters! conference in Edmonton, sponsored by the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts & Counties (AAMDC). Mayor Callioux and Councillor Laurin also attended and we all learned much from the sessions we attended.

It was at one called "Tools to Build Entrepreneurial and Vital Communities" with Mike Stolte of CIEL (Centre for Innovative & Entrepreneurial Leadership) that I heard about the possibility of a pilot project in Alberta. I let Mike know that Peace River might be interested and would be an ideal community.

Now Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development has partnered with CIEL to deliver a pilot project for one of CIEL's tools, the BVI, in four rural Alberta communities and Peace River is one of them! January-February is roughly the time for this initiative. Public input is an important feature of this initiative.

Here's another: Municipal Sustainability Planning MSP. Peace River is one of a number of Alberta communities that will receive support from the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) for this planning, which will involve public input.

And another: Planning is underway for our community visioning process. Mark your calendar: on December 9, there will be two sessions available for Peace River and area residents to participate. More details to follow so keep an eye on the Town's website.

As we move ahead with each of these initiatives, they will build on each other and by June, we should have a comprehensive and exciting vision along with action plans to carry us forward.

Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks and months. These are exciting opportunities for residents to help to identify a vision and set the course for the future.

Blog Action Day: Poverty in Peace River?

October 15 is Blog Action Day and the topic for 2008 is poverty. Some people might wonder whether poverty actually exists in Peace River. There are, of course, a few street people who are the more visible face of poverty, but people working with families see another side and understand that yes, we do have poverty and we have far too many children growing up in poverty.

What IS poverty anyway? Vibrant Calgary has defined it as “the condition of a human being who does not have sufficient economic and other resources to live with the dignity, choices and power which support full participation in society.”

And why is full participation in society important? We all need to feel that we belong, and unfortunately, when a person is poor, that sense of belonging may be harder to achieve. Most seriously, for disaffected youth, joining a gang may seem like a good way to gain a sense of belonging.

The recent spate of violence in Peace River is largely gang-related, according to the RCMP. Our community needs to find ways to address the problem by looking beyond criminal activity to the root causes, and one of those is poverty.

When I attended the Tamarack Collaborating Communities Institute in Kitchener in September, I was hugely impressed with what a number of communities are doing to reduce poverty. For example, as I've written in a previous article, in Hamilton, where in 2005 20% of the population lived in poverty, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction was convened and has mobilized the whole city to work on poverty reduction.

Could Peace River do something similar on a much smaller scale? I once belonged to the Poverty Action Committee in Peace River, but we needed a much larger body of people, including businesses, if we were going to make much difference. That group runs the Peace River Soup Kitchen, which is important, but clearly only one piece of the whole.

When the Town does its community visioning activities (stay tuned for details), I hope that residents will participate fully and will bring their best thinking and creativity to the complex issues, like poverty, that are facing us.

How do we ensure that everyone feels a part of the community? How do we help people move beyond poverty into good jobs? How we do ensure that people have safe and affordable housing in which to live and raise their families? How do we accommodate all ages and stages of life? Lots of questions--let's see if we can work together to find solutions.

Federal Election: Get Out and Vote!

Polls are open today from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM so if you didn't vote during the advance poll, be sure to get out today.

Many people will have received a card in the mail sometime ago with their polling station information (mine is the Senior's Drop-in).

The Elections Canada website is very busy this morning, but you can try it.

The local Elections Canada office is at 9509-100 Avenue, Peace River. The phone number is 1-866-497-8892.

Peace River Museum Book Launch: October 15

The Peace River Museum, Archives & Mackenzie Centre is hosting a book launch of The Peace: A history in photographs by Don Pettit on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 from 7:00 to 8:30.

There will be a book signing, DVD presentation (The Peace: A Vision so Strong), and refreshments.

For more details, visit the museum's website.

I hope to see a big crowd at there!

Join Me at Virtual Conference on October 31st

On October 31, Peace River's Community Futures office is one of 20 sites around the province that is hosting an innovative virtual conference entitled Using Rural Connections to Support Alberta’s Rural Development Strategy.

The event is being organized by Communities without Boundaries, an organization devoted to supporting and developing local coalitions of community champions and technology providers to promote broadband usage.

At each site, participants will gather to watch and listen to the conference speakers and also have an opportunity to connect with each other.

Speakers will explain how they are using broadband Internet and the Alberta SuperNet to tackle everyday issues in the areas of education, health, economic development and rural quality of life. The closing session will explore the challenges and opportunities of developing First/Last Mile Connectivity.

Register for the event at the link above. You need to first register for the site and then register for the event venue.

The day starts at 8:30 and finishes at 3:30, with lunch and refreshments provided (that's why you need to register).

Hope to see you there!

Peace River Hosting Northwest Corridor Development Corporation (NCDC) Conference: "Take Ten in the Corridor"

There are lots of visitors to Peace River this week with delegates to the NCDC "Take Ten in the Corridor” Conference and Annual General Meeting today until Thursday at the Belle Petroleum Centre. Welcome to them all!

The news release about the event noted that the speaker line-up represents "a wealth of talent and knowledge." Further, Don Zurowski, Chair of the NCDC Board said that “They’ll cover a good cross section of issues affecting transportation, trade and tourism in the Corridor, adding that “All this is in keeping with our mission of advancing what’s needed to enhance and sustain the economy and trade potential of Canada’s Northwest Corridor.”

Peace River Deputy Mayor Berry Heinen sits on the NCDC board and will be addressing the conference tomorrow morning at the breakfast session. Northern Sunrise County Councillor Carolyn Kolebaba also represents this region on the NCDC board.

For more information on NCDC, visit the website.

AUMA Convention

Peace River Mayor, Council and CAO were in Edmonton last week, attending the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) annual convention.

Premier Stelmach addressed the convention as did the new president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), Jean Perrault. We heard from Municipal Affairs Minister Ray Danyluk and he also presented Municipal Excellence Awards (congratulations to all those recipients and runners-up).

Council was able to meet with provincial officials on issues specific to the Town and during open sessions with Alberta Ministers to bring up issues such as ambulance transition. This transition is particularly worrisome for municipalities like Peace River that have integrated fire and ambulance, but other communities want to ensure a smooth transition without degradation of service so there was a great deal of discussion about this during the week.

Other highlights:

MUNICIPAL LEGISLATION  FOR MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS (pre-convention session)

While this may not sound like a riveting way to spend a day (and there were moments, especially when people asked irrelevant questions ...), this all-day session provided important information for anyone working or interested in the local level of government. (And I was pleased to see how much I actually remembered from social studies and political science classes.)

Can We Be Dissolved? I asked the presenter whether the province could dissolve municipalities the way it recently dealt with health region boards. The answer was "absolutely." Responsibility for the municipal level of government was given to the provinces by the Constitution Act of 1867 (formerly known as the British North America Act) and we are therefore "creatures of the province." (Other responsibilities given to the provinces were natural resources and education and there was lively discussion about the boundaries of those responsibilities.)

We also had discussions about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Alberta Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) legislation and how these impact on local government.

MUNICIPALITIES: THE CLOSEST TO THE PEOPLE AND THE MOST TRANSPARENT LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT

It might surprise some Peace River residents who feel that their local government is not transparent (or as transparent as they would like), but compared with how the provincial and federal governments operate, we heard repeatedly that we are indeed the most accessible and the most transparent because under the provisions of the Municipal Government Act (MGA), we are required to conduct the majority of our business in public. There is always room for improvement, of course, and the Town is working on new ways to keep residents informed about programs as well as the work of Council.

MUNICIPALITIES IN ALBERTA ARE STRUGGLING: THE IMPORTANCE OF WORKING TOGETHER

Municipal Affairs has in the past year or so dealt with over 60 Alberta municipalities that are struggling to be sustainable, and the issues aren't always just financial. Some are having great difficulty recruiting and retaining staff or even forming a council. The times call for some creativity and flexibility.

In the session on governance and collaboration with Dr. Roger Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation and Dr. Matthew McKinney from the University of Montana's Public Policy Research Institute, we were reminded that Minister Danyluk has made it clear to municipalities that if we don't get regional issues sorted out on our own, he'll do it for us.

Dr. McKinney described what he has learned about working across boundaries, and how "homegrown" solutions (rather than those imposed on a region) are generally the most successful.

When Dr. Gibbins was asked about how our municipalities can work with others who seem content with the status quo, he reflected on those 60 communities that are struggling even in these good times and how we need to be prepared to move ahead even in tough times. He asked us whether we want to be the architect of change or just let it happen to us? What an important question that is! Change happens and if we want it to work for us, we need to take an active role, no matter how difficult it may be.

It was an excellent 4 days of learning and networking. The slides from all the presentations will be available in a few weeks on the AUMA website, so check them out if you're interested in learning more.