At 5:00, Council will hear an economic development update.
Other items of interest:
Selection of the 2010 Community Enhancement Award recipients (one individual and one business). Nominees include:
Individual: Dave VanTamelen and the Alberta Summer Games Committee; Frank Light (fire safety training)
Business: River City Cinema; Peace River Town & Country Realty; Twilight Videos & Games; Java Domainn
Draft Parks & Trails Plan. According to the agenda package, this plan "provides an overview of the existing parks, playgrounds and trails within the municipality. It encompasses recommendations on the enhancement of existing trails and future development of new trails . . . [and] includes the existing 5 year Parks Upgrade plan" (the full draft document is included in the agenda package). The report references a number of important policy documents from the past three years, including Avi Friedman's downtown revitalization report, the new Municipal Development Plan, the Municipal Sustainability Plan, among others.
The Process Steps and Timelines are laid out in the Request for Decision, projecting (among other critical dates) a February 2 Public Input Open House and March 14 Council approval of the plan.
The AUMA Elected Officials Education Program (EOEP) motion that I blogged about previously is on this agenda.
Council Meetings in December and 2011: Councillor Lafontaine's request that Council consider meeting on December 20 and also on every Monday of every month throughout 2011 will be discussed. This would be a grueling schedule for staff and Council. It would mean that staff would be working prior to every long weekend to prepare the Council agenda package and that Council and some staff would lose every long weekend of the year to meeting preparation and attendance.
More troubling to me is that this schedule would also likely mean that there would be less than full Council in attendance for many of the meetings. This could allow for agenda manipulation on contentious items in order to limit debate or ensure passage of motions. I think it's important that as much as possible, every agenda item gets full attention by all or most of Council. When there are gaps built into the meeting schedule (monthly, for long weekends, or to allow for a longer summer or Christmas break), it can allow Council members to plan around those to ensure he can attend most meetings as well as have a break from Council work.
Council work can put a lot of strain on family and personal life and this proposal, while perhaps practical in terms of predictability, seems unnecessarily punitive for the CAO, Directors, other staff, and the families of mayor and councillors as well as Council members themselves.
RCMP September and October 2010 Mayor's Reports: The reports provide detailed crime statistics, broken down by category (e.g., assaults, break and enter, drugs, etc.) and by the area (Peace River municipal boundaries; the rural area around Peace River, and Grimshaw municipal boundaries). There are also traffic statistics and a "year in review" for crime and traffic statistics for the whole region. The 9 year overview provides a higher-level look at crime and traffic statistics for the region.
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