Councillors in Sexsmith will soon get the ball rolling on changes to the municipal sustainability plan. Drafted in 2010 and last updated in 2018, Mayor Kate Potter says the document was not kept up as an evergreen document and became dated. She says the plan narrowly focused on achieving specific projects, like curbside recycling, rather than broader, over-arching goals.
She adds when the committee was initially suspended in 2018, she felt that they had let an opportunity for more growth to slip through their fingers.
“This is more than just a strategic plan; this is overarching from council to council,” she says. “You have something that says this is what we love about our community… but these are the things we want to see 20 or 30 years from now.”
Potter says a key to the updated plan could come in how members of the newly formed sustainability committee are named. She says the majority of those on the panel coming from the community and will not primarily be comprised by members of council. She adds the hope remains that residents may have a different idea as to what the priorities of the community should be.
“We currently have three people, and we wanted them to go through the terms of reference and determine if we have any significant gaps in what is represented on the committee. It allows us to say this is what the community is saying to us, there is an opportunity for those representatives to also talk to other community members.”
Potter says the committee is likely to meet before the end of February to discuss the next steps more in-depth.