“It is still my dream to make Coronation a ‘crown town’,” said Coun. Vickey Horkoff at the regular Coronation Town Council meeting on March 27. “So I challenge all of you [councillors] to make some yard art for your house.”
She is also working on how to get the community involved.
It can be anything from a piece of yard art that depicts a crown using any material, such as paint, flowers or recycled material.
She is then asking that a photo be sent to vhorkoff@gmail.com by June 30 with the photos being posted at Homecoming for visitors to see and a possible map created for visitors to find all our the crowns.
The challenge is open to all ages, residents and businesses in Coronation.
At Homecoming 2017, she would like to perhaps see a tour of “Come and See the Crowns”.
“Just google crown art, there’s lots of ideas,” added Horkoff.
“My goal is possibly, if you didn’t want your crown art at the end of the year, you could donate it to the town and we could have a “where is Waldo” kind of idea or something in the same lines as geocaching.
Education Property Tax requisition
Coronation Town councillors heard at their regular meeting on Mon. March 27 the province is holding the 2017 Education Property uniform tax rates the same as last year and so the town’s requisition amount is down.
“Not necessarily good news,” said Chief Administrative Officer, Sandra Kulyk “because that means our equalized assessment has gone down which is not a positive thing.”
Collectively the residental rate went up and the commercial rate went down.
“We’ve been after the province to freeze the education tax for many many years,” said Kulyk. “Ironically they froze it at the highest rate.
Provincial funding down
Provincial operating municipal grants including Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI), Gas Tax and the Basic Municipal Transportation Grant (used to be called the Street Improvement grant) has decreased grant monies from $402,728 to $399,463.
Next year because Coronation’s population went down, the Transportation grant will be down a little bit.
MSI Operating grant is down from $57,163 to $55,531, MSI Capital grant is down from $237,689 to $235,820 and the Gas Tax Fund this year is up slightly from $51,056 to $51,292.
“Overall our grant sources have declined quite significantly,” said Chief Administrative Officer, Sandra Kulyk.
SMRWSC water budget
Shirley McClellan Regional Water Services Commission 2017 budget was presented to council for consideration and review.
“This has been an interesting budget for the Shirley McLellan committee to go through and pass,” said CAO Kulyk.
“The water rate is unchanged at $2.50/cubic metre,” said Kulyk, “which means you won’t have to make any consideration of changing our water rate.”
Administration fee last year was $5828 with it going down to $3241 for 2017 because concern was raised by some of the membership on how that administration fee charge is calculated.
In the past the total administration fees for the year was divided equally among all members so Special Areas, County of Camrose, County of Leduc, Stettler, the bigger centres, were paying exactly the same thing as Halkirk, said Kulyk.
What the committee has decided to do was fund a portion of the administration charge for the smaller communities from surpluses so this year’s rate was reduced by $2587.
With the withdrawal of the Camrose and Lacombe counties from SMRWC, the annual debenture support for the 14 remaining members has increased with Coronation’s share going up to $3789.
“Hopefully the remaining members will think long and hard from withdrawing from the commission and what the impact will be,” said Kulyk.
They did have to pay a penalty for pulling out.
Town office will calculate the surcharges needed to apply to water bills to make sure enough is being charged to make up the increased fees.
Campground
Council discussed offering seasonal campsite rentals at the Coronation dam but after much discussion it was decided not to offer seasonal campsite rentals.
It will remain at a monthly rate of $750; daily rates $28 per night full service sites; $25 partial service sites and $15 for unserviced/tenting sites.
CAO report
CAO Kulyk reported she had confirmation from Alberta Transportation that they will be completing the overlay of the portion of Hwy 12 from 10 km east of Hwy 36 (Fleet) to 2 km east of Coronation in the 2017 construction season.
A notice of construction will be issued with further details, closer to the project start date.
Kulyk also noted she had attended two Coal Coalition meetings, one with Cactus Corner Group and the other with Urban Systems in Forestburg.
Urban Systems has done a study for the Cactus Corner group and are now doing one for the Forestburg group.
Kulyk noted that the report will be fundamentally different for the two groups as Hanna, in general, the only affected community while the Forestburg group affects many communities.
