Woodlands County Council recently created a new way to stay up to date on infrastructure projects

At a recent Woodlands County meeting, Council discussed how they could best be updated on infrastructure projects throughout the County. Back on March 1, Councillor Dave Kusch brought forward the idea of regular updates on the planning and projects in Woodlands County. A couple of weeks later, Administration brought forward four options for the group to discuss.

The first option entailed a separate monthly meeting where Administrative staff (Director of Infrastructure, Field Services Manager, Area Supervisors, Recreation Supervisor, Ag Services Manager, Environmental Services Manager, and the Airport) could provide updates to Council and answer questions.

The second option was to add a written Infrastructure Report to their Council meetings monthly, while the third option was to do a monthly email. The final choice was to hold regular Teams meetings with a standing topic of infrastructure planning and projects. Of the four, Director of Infrastructure Services Andre Bachand said that Administration recommended going with option two, the monthly RFD at meetings.

Councillor Kusch said he liked options one and four. “I like being able to at least have the conversation instead of just in an RFD. If there’s questions or concerns, or anything comes up on the matter or areas of maybe (there is) opportunity in some of the districts that we’ve seen that maybe administration hasn’t, then we can have that conversation.” Councillor Jeremy Wilhelm wondered if a hybrid could be made, where Council received a monthly report and had a quarterly meeting to get together and chat. “It might be a good hybrid to offset costs of increasing administration time but also still giving us time to be informed and discuss.”

Reeve John Burrows liked the monthly meeting option but said it would only make sense when things were busier. He said it would make sense to have regular meetings when it was time to plan paving or do road repairs, the costlier infrastructure projects. “Then you can relax that a little bit when we’re just dealing with clean-ups and plowing and that kind of thing because we are at a different service level.”

Councillor Kuelken said it would give them a better understanding of how the County’s planning takes place and that it would allow them to align it with their asset management strategy. “Infrastructure talks to us about what they are planning to do in that time frame, and then we understand that that’s what’s happening.”

Councillor Kusch said that sometimes projects start but that he and his colleagues don’t know much about them, which makes answering questions from residents difficult. “It would be nice to be a little more in the loop on that. I do agree that maybe a monthly meeting on its own might be a little much.”

Councillor Alan Deane agreed on the hybrid model. He said that with a monthly RFD, Council would see the items listed and decide if a meeting was necessary or if the written update sufficed. “There could be RFDs that come across our desks that don’t need a meeting. But then there could be one where we want to deal with something, and we schedule that to a meeting.”

He said he didn’t want to bind Administration to set monthly meetings, preferring instead to have meetings when a topic called for it. “I’m not even sure if I’m in favour of a quarterly meeting because, during construction season, we might want to have a meeting two or three months in a row.”

Councillor Wilhelm added that depending on the information requested by Council, they could do a hybrid of all four. “We could start with a full meeting in the spring and then have a Teams meeting follow up as we go, and then by the time we get to winter where nothing’s happening, we could have RFDs afterwards.”

Reeve Burrows provided an example of how more knowledge on infrastructure projects would help Council going forward. “We had quite a long period of time working on Horne Road. They had equipment all over the place there. I had residents calling me asking how this could possibly be this much money and what are they doing here, and why are they doing this. I didn’t have any answers for them on the specifics of the project necessarily. I’d feel a lot better as a Council (to) at least understand what we have going on.”

CAO Gordon Frank joined the chatter, letting Council know that they planned to do a spring road tour, which gives Council and Administration a chance to get out on the road as a group and see issues that need attention. Bachand added that the tour would happen after break-up, around early June.

Council voted unanimously to add a monthly Infrastructure Report to their meetings as a standing agenda item. If/when Council feels a topic on the report needs closer attention, they will hold a Special Meeting to get more in-depth information.