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City, county laying foundation for rec task force

St. Albert and Sturgeon County have started talks that may eventually see them work together on future recreational ventures.

St. Albert and Sturgeon County have started talks that may eventually see them work together on future recreational ventures.

The two municipalities had their first meeting of the Recreation Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework (ICF) on April 5 after being mandated by the former NDP government to form a task force on recreation by April 2020. Working together regionally isn’t new for the city as that’s the main goal of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board, but the scope of that board doesn’t cover recreation.

The inaugural meeting focused on establishing values and principles for the city and county if they were to move forward with future projects.

“Sturgeon County and the City of St. Albert have been working collaboratively on a number of initiatives over the past few years and we look forward to a similar approach for the Recreation Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework,” Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw said in a media release.

City Coun. Ken MacKay, who is acting as co-chair with Hnatiw, said on Wednesday the meeting went well. The two parties used a provincial grant to hire a facilitator to help out with the initial first step.

MacKay said this was a chance to better understand the challenges facing the county since the city currently only has one ICF to manage while Sturgeon County has many.

“It was a really interesting process,” he said. “I think it was positive for a first meeting. We were just setting some of the framework and ground rules and how we could see (ourselves) going forward. We didn’t get down to specifics.”

The city is currently looking to boost what it's offering recreationally in a number of ways, whether that be a trilateral project with Edmonton and the province for a regional soccer centre or finding ways to increase ice access. MacKay said the task force with the county will explore everything from the number of programs being offered by each municipality to the kinds of recreational opportunities available.

He said some of the questions the task force aims to answer are whether there is overlap on what the municipalities are providing and if there are ways to collaborate better.

“That could mean anything from program, program delivery, training. Maybe we have a skill set that just because of our size of our recreation they don’t have access to? Ultimately, we can look at shared delivery of those services. We could even look at shared facilities but I mean, those things are down (the line)," he said.

With the UCP coming in to form a majority government, MacKay said he doesn’t know if anything will change regarding the mandate of the task force.

“We’ll have to stay tuned to see if there are other things that the premier-elect and his office brings forward. But I don’t think right off the top that our work on this will be impacted by the election," he said.

The next meeting of the task force is expected to take place in May.

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