The Village of Youngstown invited the community to sit in on an informal open house to take a look at the updates to the local land use bylaw.
Junior planner Levi Hayworth from Palliser Regional located in Hanna came and explained a few highlights on changes made at the open house on Tues. Sept. 1.
One of note was the inclusion of cannabis usage as laid out by the 2018 federal decision as well as different Municipal Government Act changes.
Another thing that Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Emma Garlock wanted to be changed was to have the layout easier to interpret while also shrinking its size.
She wished to see more maps and graphs included.
Five people came to the open house to learn more and voice concerns.
Residents noted beautification as important, noting the lack of flowers in the six flower beds spread out across town.
Administration explained that this topic should be towards the Unsightly Bylaw but continued the conversation to understand residents’ points of view.
One person mentioned possibly getting a family to ‘adopt’ a box to help this as village administration said they were low on staff this year and the beautification committee had slowly disbanded as interests waned.
The other option for the flower beds was to get the school involved for students to get extra credits while beautifying the village.
“It’s a lot for one person,” said Coun. Ken Johnson.
“The flower beds didn’t go in because they didn’t have a public works person nor beautification committee,” added CAO Garlock. “Our public works guy was on parental leave so they were doing the bare minimum this year to survive.”
Attendees and council agreed they wished to see ‘more flowers than metal’ that is often associated with the local Back In Time Museum.
First reading of the newly formatted bylaw will be seen at the next council meeting on Tues. Oct. 6.
Franchise fee
During correspondence, CAO Garlock mentioned this year’s franchise fee letter from ATCO was received.
Approximately $2,000 is collected each year.
No motion was made whether to continue with the 1.25 per cent per month collection rate or not but a unanimous verbal agreement was made to keep it the same rate.
Landfill road letter
A letter from Big Country Waste Management was received and discussed at the meeting.
Previously, a letter was sent to the organization to help solve the issue about reaching the village’s own landfill as water often makes the road impossible to cross to dump the weekly garbage run.
The letter back stated that engineers have been out to the landfill to see what can be done.
Terri Huxley
ECA Review
