Members of the arts community encouraged St. Albert city council Monday night to give its approval to the city’s cultural master plan, which councillors did with a unanimous vote.
Of six individuals and groups that spoke before the scheduled vote, five spoke in support of the document, which will guide future decisions on the city’s arts, heritage and cultural footprint for the next 15 years.
“Your willingness to plant [the seed of culture] will ensure the sustainability and vitality of the city’s cultural offerings,” said Tanya Doran of the Friends of the Children’s Theatre Society. “Recognizing the need to nurture the next generation of participants will grow an orchard.”
The plan, which has been in the works since 2010, and has involved focus groups, surveys, consultations and open houses for the public, spells out six key priorities with several recommendations intended to bolster each priority. They include celebrating cultural assets, increasing and deepening cultural participation, establishing sustainable funding, ensuring the strength of infrastructure and optimizing cultural service delivery.
RC Strategies, the same group contracted to develop the recreation master plan passed by council last month, was also hired to develop the cultural master plan, which it then subcontracted to Lord Cultural Resources.
“This is a high-level plan intended to provide guidance for cultural services,” said city culture director Kelly Jerrott.
Not everyone who spoke about the plan was enamoured of it. Lynda Flannery, director of the St. Albert Taxpayers Association (SATA), urged councillors to send the plan “back to the drawing table,” saying the implicit costs were more than St. Albert could afford. While there is no total value attached to the plan, Flannery said in SATA’s estimation, all of the initiatives would cost the city more than $80 million.
“This plan positions culture as a core service and we suggest you reject this premise,” Flannery said. “If you don’t do these things and spend these dollars, you don’t achieve what the plan proposes. By approving the plan, you are giving full authority to move ahead.”
But Coun. Roger Lemieux pointed out the plan did not bind council’s hands financially.
“The master plan, if approved, is not written in stone. Every year the budget comes by and it depends on the moneys available so this plan can be re-written,” Lemieux said.
Coun. Cam Mackay also tried to amend the plan before its approval, asking for any references to cultural policy in regional planning be deleted from the master plan.
“Regional planning is done by a new act, the Capital Region Board has been trying and for us to spend any time to develop cultural policy to impact regional planning would be very foolish,” MacKay said. “I’m not sure what benefit we’d even get from doing this. I need to know this is achievable at all to have any staff spending time on this.”
A majority of council defeated MacKay’s amendment, with only MacKay and Coun. Malcolm Parker voting in its favour.
The plan now moves into the implementation phase, according to Jerrott, which will involve collaborating with other city departments for detailed plans for the first five years, then two more five-year plans. Any business cases will come before council in the fall as part of the budget process.
“You’ll see the implementation strategy during next year’s budget process,” Jerrott said.
