Three regional municipalities sign collaboration agreement

Medicine Hat City Councillor Julie Friesen was a member of the steering committee.

She says this is a regional framework and an understanding of the shared future together.

“Individually we’re strong, but together we’re stronger and so I think the real benefit here has been the continued relationship building between the three municipalities. So that you have an environment where you can talk about stuff that’s easy, and you can also talk about the stuff that’s hard, things that are going to require some discussion together,” she said.

The ICF has been in the making since June of 2018 and was approved in March of this year.

During the signing, Town of Redcliff Mayor Dwight Kilpatrick said, “I’m grateful that this group got together, got this document in order. It’s one of the rare trilateral agreements because they did work the whole process through as a trilateral agreement rather than each one of us having bilateral agreements, even though we can break off and do that.”

The ICF guides municipalities to work together in future projects like transportation, water/wastewater, and solid waste.

Shared services including emergency services, recreation, and pound/animal services.

And also cost-sharing on economic development opportunities.

“This is just an example,” Friesen said, “We have nothing concrete at this point and time. But if one of the municipalities is looking at developing a new recreational facility- ice, or swimming. We should talk about that together. Because wouldn’t that be more beneficial if all three could come or maybe just two could come?”

Cypress County Councillor Robin Kurpjuweit was part of the working group.

He sees the ICF as the beginning of a tighter regional collaboration moving forward and that municipalities can work together to get the “best bang for our buck”.

“I think that one of the real advantages with the ICF is the fact it was a philosophical change to how we approach cooperation. Cooperation is you have three municipalities working together and maybe they all chip in to contribute a little bit here, a little bit there. But there are opportunities where we can get together and truly collaborate. We can eliminate some of the redundant spending if we don’t need to recreate the same program in three different municipalities we can potentially work together sharing that,” he said.

Kurpjuweit adds it’s a stronger solution in the long run if you can work together.

Especially if municipalities are dealing with similar issues or projects.

A city release states, “The ICF document was prepared because of provincial legislation introduced in 2017 intended to foster increased levels of intermunicipal collaboration.”

by Chantal Wagner

Three regional municipalities sign collaboration agreement

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