LAC LA BICHE - Lac La Biche County councillors will continue to host live-streamed council meetings starting on Aug. 27, following a five-week summer recess.
The last regular council meeting took place on July 23. The regular meetings, which are recorded, live-streamed and archived on the municipal website take place on the first, second and fourth Tuesdays of each month. The Aug. 27 date will also see the return of regular, non-recorded strategic sessions that take place after the regular council meetings when needed.
The Strategic Committee of Council sessions are a new addition to the council schedule this year, and are seen as a way to have initial discussions and conversations — sometimes in a closed-door setting – about topics that may later be voted on. While the strategic meetings and the discussions aren’t live-streamed, a recap of votes from the meetings are filed onto the municipal website.
At the last strategic session, councillors, staff and administration were presented with the draft capital spending plan for the next 10 years. The plan outlines roughly $270 million in projected spending on capital projects over the next decade. The proposed spends include $2million in upgrades at the Beaver Lake landfill in 2025, as well as $4.6 million spent in 2025 on fleet vehicle replacement, and $4 million earmarked for the same year for a “Bold Center road network.” Over the next 10 years, other items include a $2 million line item in 2026 for road paving in Bayview Beach, and more than $5 million in municipal funding earmarked between 2026 and 2030 for intersection improvements along a three-kilometre stretch of Highway 55 just west of Lac La Biche.
The 10 year plan is seen as a fluid and dynamic document that will bring additions and deletions as it goes. As of August 20, the minutes from the July 23 council meeting and any voting results from the strategic meeting had not been posted to the municipal website.
Councillors see the strategic session — even though they are still considered to be public meetings — as a way to have more open conversations without being live-streamed instantly.
Lac La Biche County councillors described the strategic sessions as a “safe place” to have idea sharing with senior management and staff.
"Having that safe place to come in and idea-share ... not live-streamed to the public where someone is maybe worried to say something one way or the other regarding a council direction," said councillor Lorin Tkachuk. “It’s a safe place where we don’t have to be live-streamed every minute of every meeting."
The strategic meetings, he added, also offer municipal staff and senior administrative leadership an opportunity to offer the “straight goods” to councillors instead of perhaps not speaking up in a regular meeting that is recorded and shown in real-time online.
The strategic sessions are not a new addition to municipal politics. When the ideas was first introduced to Lac La Biche County councillors in February, then Associate CAO of Corporate Services Melanie McConnell said the idea of discussion meetings and strategy sessions that are “less formal” and “idea-generating” is common in other municipalities.
"I see these as a really good venue for council and CAO to touch base on things as needed, so if you look at other municipalities that have a committee as a whole its not uncommon where they will have closed sessions on strategic initiatives updates," she explained at that meeting. "The committee doesn't have decision-making abilities, but makes recommendations to council as a whole."
Like the regular meetings, the strategic committee meetings also allow councillors the option of going behind closed doors to discuss matters privately, McConnell had explained.
Between the last regular meeting of council and the last Strategic Committee of Council meeting, at least 15 municipal staff — including McConnell and other senior managers — are no longer employed by the municipality. The job losses followed the release of a $200,000 efficiency review of all County departments that was conducted by a third-party consultant.
The review was not an agenda item at any of the last four strategic meetings, but the report was accepted after a closed door session by Lac La Biche County councillors at their July 9 regular council meeting.
As of Aug. 20, agenda items for the Aug. 27 strategy meeting and regular council meeting were not yet available.
