The Village of Clive, at its regular meeting Nov. 14, voted in favour of using Geographic Information System (GIS) to map its roads, as well as its sewer and water lines.
“Having GIS in-house will allow public works, or us, when residents come in (with inquiries), to pull it up and take a look. It will help with trouble shooting,” said Clive Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Carla Kenney.
GIS is a computer system that captures, stores, checks and displays data related to the earth’s surface.
For instance, this will allow Clive public works department to locate a water line shut off even when it’s five feet under snow.
The Village of Clive will be the managing partner for this project with Caroline, Eckville and Bentley, if their councils approve their participation under the Alberta Community Partnership Program.
The Village of Cremona has already successfully converted to GIS, said CAO Kenney.
Initial cost for a community to set up is $3,500 with a yearly licensing fee of $2,000.
Cloud technology allows smaller municipalities to share a server, thus reducing the cost of the system and saving on initial aerial data collection by flying over all the communities in the same trip.
Wait and see attitude
Clive council deferred making a decision on participating in the 211 Information and Referral Phone Service offered by United Way.
“We want to wait and see what other communities in the region are doing,” said CAO Kenney, adding that Lacombe County, Lacombe and Blackfalds also deferred their decisions.
The 211 system allows callers to access trained Information and Referral Specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week regarding social, government, health and community services in over 150 languages.
Clive residents can currently access information and referral services through a number of federal, provincial and municipal agencies.
Based on Clive’s population it would cost $494 per year to join the 211 telephone service.
FCSS funding continues
Village of Clive will get $17,166 from the province to fund its Family and Community Services Support (FCSS) program in 2017. That represents 80 per cent of the funding with the village kicking in $4,292 for a total of $21,458.
Clive has its own FCSS coordinator and the program is run out of the Lacombe FCSS.
Drainage issue
Tagish Engineering looked into a drainage issue on Longstreet Ave. west of 50 St. near the hotel. They discovered that there are two low elevation trap lows along the north and south sides of Longstreet Ave. near the 50 St. intersection.
Tagish’s report to council said the best option would be to construct a ditch or swale along the south side of the roadway to the west where it could eventually drain away.
A rough cost is estimated to be about $25,000.
Council voted in favour of providing these engineering results to the complainant of the drainage issues.