Okotoks -
Smoking bylaw will be drafted

“I still believe very, very strongly this shouldn’t be a matter left to the municipalities and that the province of Alberta has let us down.” --Jamie Tiessen Okotoks Councillor

By Andrea Barber
Staff Reporter

Town council took the first step on Monday toward making Okotoks smoke free.
Council passed a motion to draft a non-smoking bylaw which will be brought back to council. Before it is approved, public hearings will be held and no date was set as to when the bylaw might be in effect if approved.
Although there has been overwhelming support for a non-smoking bylaw from Okotoks residents, some local restaurant and bar owners are not as enthused.
Jack Fudge, a local restaurant patron and smoker, said he thinks it’s an infringement of his rights.
“I’ve been smoking since the Second World War. I go to Smitty’s every morning and I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t continue doing this. The non-smokers have their places to go, I don’t see why smokers shouldn’t have some place,” he said.
Chris Banershied, the owner of Smitty’s, spoke about the perceived negative impacts on his business.
“Being a business owner, I am concerned,” he said. “All we’re asking (of council) is to do some serious thought. We are individual owners and we’ve invested money for ourselves in our businesses.”
He said he suffered a direct loss of sales right off the bottom line when he removed smoking from his restaurant. He also said that sales eventually recovered.
“I had a lot of people upset because they were removed from the restaurant and placed in the lounge,” he continued.
When asked about the health of his employees he said they choose to work there and he does not force anyone to work in a smoking area if they do not want to. For those employees who do smoke, he feels it’s a non-issue.
“The smoking issue wouldn’t really apply (to those staff) because they are polluting themselves with it anyways,” he said.
More than one councillor stated their disappointment in having to make this decision at the municipal level because the provincial government is responsible for health care.
“I still believe very, very strongly this shouldn’t be a matter left to the municipalities and that the province of Alberta has let us down,” said Coun. Jamie Tiessen.
The question of freedom of choice also arose more than once both from the gallery and from council.
“It removes the freedom from individuals in our society,” said Coun. Laurie Hodson. “We have fought two wars to protect those freedoms.”
Public hearings in regards to the no smoking bylaw are expected to be scheduled starting as early as May.

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Turner Valley experiencing boom

By Pamela Keith
Staff Reporter

The Town of Okotoks may be the second fastest growing municipality in Canada, but the Town of Turner Valley is earning some bragging rights of its own.
Results from the 2006 federal census revealed the town has grown nearly 19 per cent since 2001 to reach a population of 1,908 people. That equates to an increase of exactly 300 people from when the census was last conducted in 2001.
Due to the rapid growth in the past year, town officials expect that number now to be more than 2,000 residents.
“Turner Valley, for many years, has only shown growth of maybe one to two per cent, so to all of a sudden jump up that high over a short period, it’s just unreal,” said town chief administrative officer, Stan Ogrodniczuk. “We are feeling the same effect as anybody else.”
As a result of the extensive growth, the towns’ services are being pushed to the limit.
The town is currently in the midst of constructing a $4.7 million raw water reservoir that is expected to service a population of 4,000 people.
Aside from planning for future annexations to expand its boundaries, the town has recently been forced to create two new administrative positions — executive assistant and accounting clerk —and turn the planning/development/economic officer into a full-time position.
Already this year, approximately 200 new lots in the town are in the process of being sold and Ogrodniczuk expects council to be reviewing upwards of 1,100 more lots soon.
“The new positions are a result of our growth. When there was only 30 or 40 lots a year being proposed, you could do that fairly easily with one or two people,” said Ogrodniczuk. “Now it just takes a lot more man hours that really aren’t available anymore. You are virtually doubling the town.”
Mayor Marj Straub was born and raised in Turner Valley and is pleased to see the town’s population increasing after being stagnant for many years.
What Straub doesn’t want to see is the floodgates open and the town grow too fast. If that should ever happen, however, she feels council is already one step ahead.
“I think we are definitely prepared. Once we get the (water) reservoir going then it can open up even more growth as long as we have enough water for everybody,” said Straub. “All of a sudden I think people found us and said, ‘wow this isn’t a bad place to live after all.’ I certainly want it to keep growing and reach its full potential.”

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach speaks at the Highwood PC dinner last Saturday. photo by Andrea Barber

Premier Ed Stelmach was the bearer of good news as guest speaker at this year’s Highwood PC Association’s AGM and dinner.
Stelmach addressed more than 400 local supporters on Saturday night in Okotoks.
“(Tonight) I’ll talk about the five priorities of government, I’ll also talk about some of the things that may be coming forward in terms of environment and federal government policies and where we’re going to go from here,” said Stelmach.
“It’s really just capturing what we did in the last 100 days and of course some of the issues we’ll be tackling over not only this legislative session, but how we’re going to position government and part of that will be broadening tax base, commercialization of technologies in the province of Alberta so we’re not as dependent on oil and gas as we are today.”
He spoke directly about water issues and the pressure on Alberta’s water system in reference to the growth in the province.
“We do have our Water for Life strategy, which is quite a comprehensive plan for Alberta, this is just an indication of how we’re going to be not only doing more planning, but looking at storage of water in the future as our population grows. We have 3.3 million people in the province today, what’s the province going to look like with 4 or 4.5 million?” he asked. “Given the fact that Alberta is the only place that there is economic growth, take Alberta out, there’s zero growth in Canada. So obviously a lot of people are coming to Alberta to find jobs.”
He spoke about some achievements his government has made in his first couple of months of leadership.
“We’ve worked very quickly on the openness and transparency of government. We’ve now just completed our housing task force report and the minister will be bringing recommendations with respect to that, and we’re working on our immigration agreement and progressing very well and we might have some good news here in the next couple of weeks,” he said.
“We dealt with some issues very quickly. One was Fort McMurray, (and) additional funds over the next three years to deal with the complex situation with housing, education and health, and of course that’s something that’s going to require work and we’re working on the whole capital plan of Alberta. We’re trying to bring down inflation, and we’re close to looking at a number of new ideas. In fact we may even work with the government of B.C. who’s done a lot of work in terms of financing, especially with large infrastructure projects. So a lot has happened and will continue to happen.”
As for the federal budget affecting investment in Alberta oil sands, Stelmach said that to date they have seen an investment drop of one to two per cent in share value, which, according to him, is quite small. He said he is more concerned about the new environmental regulations that will be introduced by the federal government and what that will do to further investment.
“It’s not that companies don’t want to introduce new technology… it’s the lack of clarity (with the plan),” he said.
But all in all he seemed pleased with the federal budget.
“Finally (Alberta) is being treated as part of Canada because we now have equal capital funding for social and health transfers.” He comments.
In fact, health transfers to the tune of $353 million will go to the people of the province of Alberta in forms of services, he said. But health dollars won’t be transferred until 2014 because the current agreement doesn’t expire until then.
Two pilot projects are currently in place to look at ambulance service in rural areas. Once they are complete the government can then make decisions regarding ambulance service.
It’s possible that $200 million could go towards improving ambulance access, he said.
One of the more exciting and positive announcements for rural Alberta was that fact that municipalities can expect to receive $1.4 billion in 2010 to be spread across the province, he said.
For growing Alberta, this money should relieve some of the pressures.

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