An update of happenings in the community with Mayor Chichak

 

With it being almost a year since the election, the Press sat down with Mayor Maryann Chichak to see how things are going and where the focus is currently set for council. Three new members were elected last yea: Councillors Hilts, Pickard, and Connell, and for them the process involved a lot of learning and understanding. “Administration and council have spent a lot of time on the educational portion to ensure a well-educated town council. To make good choices going forward you need to understand the decisions that were made in the past and how they affect and impact the present and the future,” she explained.

 

“Many times, and this includes me when I first came onto council, you look at things and you can’t understand why something is the way it is, and you can’t make sense of it. You automatically want to change it until you understand it and see why that decision was made. You might no longer want to change it, or you still might want to change it, and that’s okay, but education is the golden key for all new councillors and, if anything, we have done an excellent job of refreshing our existing council on everything that has been done in the past, and we did a really good job of educating the new people that came on board, too. That’s one thing that I am very proud of.”

 

Thanks to previous councils that have worked hard on planning projects for the future, the new council didn’t have too many new ones to undertake. “We already have so many existing ones in place. One big one would be the Sportsfield Master Plan as we went over what we wanted to do with it, approving the final plan, putting it onto our Capital Plan, and then figuring out how we wanted to implement it,” explained Mayor Chichak.

 

The new Municipal Centre has been a big discussion for council as it reviews the process in speaking to consultants who have been hired, seeing the conceptual design, the projected operating costs for such a facility, and going through it to see what the funding model would be for it from a capital perspective. She said the public engagement side has also been part of that review. Council has also been reviewing the agreements with the county to see if any new ones would benefit both groups or if any existing ones need to be tweaked.

 

Mayor Chichak said she is happy to see that council has bought into the philosophy of economic development and the importance of it. “It’s about looking at what type of opportunities there are out there for us including the Business and Industrial Park and the grant we applied for. It’s about making sure we have the right stuff in place so that if we can proceed with an industrial park, then we will already have a project ready to go with industry able to participate with us.”

 

Previously, the Town of Whitecourt and Woodlands County applied for the Alberta Community Partnership Grant and were approved for it. The money allowed them to hire a consultant to work in conjunction with both councils to see what kind of business the industrial park could look at. “The consultant is going to answer the questions we need answered. Things like: what kind of industry would be interested? What kind of product could it be? Would it be a value-added product coming in from the Duvernay? Are there other types of industry we can put into an industrial park that we haven’t looked at and, if so, what do we need to do to make that happen?”

 

Mayor Chichak said the consultant would look at the land around the area both in Woodlands County and within Whitecourt and provide information on how to implement the next step. “The consultant will put everything together along with different options and opportunities for us to look at in the coming year. That could be a big next step for diversifying our economy. I think that was something council recognized that was important for us to remain a stable community. Anytime you can diversify the economy is a win-win for businesses and residents here because it helps stabilize you a little bit through the boom and bust cycle.”

 

When asked where she sees Whitecourt in three years Mayor Chichak said she anticipates a positive impact from the energy side thanks to the developments within the Duvernay. “Even the activity we see going down the highway seems to be increasing. Anytime you see money being put into the region around us for further development and exploration and more traffic coming up the highway it usually means the economy, to some degree, is turning around. That should be good news for Whitecourt from all perspectives including small business, big business, residents, real estate, and service industries.”