While 2016 was a challenging year for many, including Kneehill County, it had some great accomplishments, and are looking strong going into 2017.
The Mail caught up with Reeve Bob Long, and he recounts a positive year, with one of the highlights being its new County offices.
“It started with the opening of our new administration building in March,” he said. “With that announcement we were also finalizing our budget. We did have a $1 million operating surplus. We used that and some extra money to pay our debts so we became debt free in April 2016.
“One of the promises we made to our ratepayers was that we would not build the building until we had the money to pay cash for it, so we combined all of those accomplishments into one.”
In May, the new medical clinic, which is attached to the administration building in Three Hills, opened. This led to several doctors coming to begin practice in the community.
“We are currently sitting in the neighbourhood of eight to nine doctors by year end,” Long said.
Another great accomplishment for the county was the purchase of Horseshoe Canyon.
“We had been working on that for about four or five years. The owners were concerned about the liability of the tourists, so we worked with them to solve that situation, and it came down to us buying it,” he said. “We think it is going to be a boon to the area.”
On the ground, the County kept busy with about 70 kilometres of new pavement and about one-third of the county had new gravel on the roads. The County also built two new grader sheds, one in Torrington and one in Trochu.
These made it a productive year for the County, even in a downturned economy.
“You can’t stop, just because. It was one of the things that we were adamant about when doing our budget, we didn’t want to have to cut services and impact our ratepayers. We wanted to tighten up where we could. When you look at paying off the debt, it freed up $1.5 million a year in repayments for us, so it all helps.
Preparing for the future the County completed a review and passed a new land use bylaw, and are exploring diversification.
“Looking to the future, as our revenues from oil and gas are decreasing, the question becomes how do you replace them? We felt that one of the alternatives we had to look at was an economic development officer and the urgency to update our land use by law to make sure our rules and regulations were conducive to getting things done.”
