The real value in the annual Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) conference for St. Albert city council lies in the networking.
The city spent $6,321 on conference registration fees for councillors to attend the recent event. Those registration fees don’t include any travel expenses or per diems council members are eligible to claim.
For full-day AUMA events, councillors and the mayor are eligible to claim $200 per day. According to council’s remuneration and expenses policy, only six members of council can attend AUMA’s annual conference unless it’s being held in Edmonton, which it was this year.
With city coffers covering the bill, the Gazette reached out to all seven members of council to find what they learned at this year’s conference.
“It’s not so much about the sessions, it’s about what you take away from conversations with other politicians,” said Coun. Cathy Heron.
Heron’s observations were echoed by many of her council colleagues, all of whom attended the annual AUMA conference in Edmonton last week.
As Coun. Gilles Prefontaine noted, it’s not just a meet-and-greet sort of networking – it’s conversations with fellow elected officials that go deeper about shared concerns or common situations.
Councillors did some surveying of their colleagues as well, often about utility bills and the use of Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) grants from the provincial government in utility projects with some very different results.
Heron’s informal survey found no communities that used MSI funds for utility capital projects.
“It’s a nice feeling for me,” Heron said. Heron was the councillor who spearheaded motions to phase out using MSI grants for utility capital infrastructure, which will result in an increase in St. Albert utility bills.
Coun. Sheena Hughes’ casual survey, which was similar to Heron’s, found several communities that do use the funds to build utility infrastructure.
“Every one of them said they maximize the use of MSI and include it in utilities whenever possible,” Hughes said.
Hughes pointed to the provincial government’s website, where Municipal Affairs has a report on what communities used their MSI funds for in 2013 – several of those municipalities do show utilities projects, particularly in counties or smaller urban centres.
Council members said there was a strong provincial politician presence at this conference different from previous years.
”I thought from that point the mood at the provincial level was interesting, they were kind of all hands on deck,” said Mayor Nolan Crouse.
Coun. Tim Osborne said he was able to speak to the minister of human services about the lack of increases to Family and Community Support Services, while Coun. Wes Brodhead chatted with the energy minister about how to bring energy-industry business to St. Albert and other ministers about making public transit a priority.
“One of the things I appreciated this year was really the opportunity to do some advocacy work while there,” Osborne said.
There were several sessions on regionalization and amalgamation, noted by several members of council.
“It was something that was not pushed away by municipalities. Many of them were looking for innovative ways to play together,” said Prefontaine.
Not all sessions were about that or just meetings with provincial ministers – Coun. Cam MacKay found the most useful session he went to was with lawyers outlining legalities that could affect municipalities.
Like his colleagues, he noted the networking is the most valuable part of the conference.
The mayor provided an individual breakdown of council’s registration fees. That broke down into $1,092 for Hughes’ registration and MacKay’s was $1,475. The other five members of council’s registrations were $750.75 each.
