It was standing room only in Hanna last Thursday night at the United Conservative Party Constituency Association AGM.
 Stan Solberg attended the meeting on May 24, and is now a director. He said the previous record for attendance was 80. President David Mohl said there were 313 voting members at the meeting, including a busload of interested members coming to the meeting.
      The three candidates running to represent the party in the constituency come, the next election, were given the opportunity to address the meeting. This included incumbent Rick Strankman, Nate Horner, and Todd Pawsey.  
     Mohl said there was a good cross-section from a variety of political backgrounds, from in towns and the rural communities. He notes that much of the interest came from a younger crowd.
    “The age on our board dropped immensely,” said Mohl. “I am excited, because they are young, reliable and definitely  for open nominations.”
    Mohl remained president,  Richard Bailey is Secretary and Michelle Toews is Chief Financial Officer. Mohl said 23 of the 27 members of the board are new. Local representation of the board includes Solberg, Linda Fisher, Donna Vigar, and Lyle Rowe. Vice presidents will be appointed at a regular meeting.
A local nomination committee made up of Doug Jones, chair, Michelle Toews,  Brad Slorstad, Brad Osadczuk, James Marshall, was appointed.
    Mohl says the rules of the nomination process are set by the party, and he believes it will be a level playing field.
    “When I came, all I said was ‘I don’t care if our MLA is running again, there is going to be open nominations. With a new party formed out of two parties … anybody should be able to run,” he said.
    He said the local nomination committee sets the time frame, and encourages people to run. They will also look at things such as forums and polling stations.
    “The party does all the vetting and the approvals. Once the nominations closes, if there is more than one candidate, they determine to run an election,” he said.  
    Mohl said the committee will be meeting in the near future to nail down the nomination details.

Starland County staff had a meeting at the Morrin Community Hall following a seven-hour long blaze that ultimately destroyed over half of the Starland County Office on Friday, May 25.
The fire began at approximately 5:00 a.m. where Morrin, Munson, Drumheller, and Rumsey Fire Departments were dispatched. EMS and RCMP were also at the scene.
The County has determined that another meeting will take place at the Munson Community Hall on Monday. Priorities include essential services like the fire departments, communications, and cemetery records, and the water system that is controlled by the county.
“We are still Starland County Strong,” said an emotional Shirley Bremer, Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for Starland County, at the beginning of the meeting.
The structure sustained tremendous smoke damage. Trackhoes and backhoes were used to lift up the roof so more water could enter to battle the blaze.
At one point, the Village of Morrin was running out of water, so neighbours of the community stepped in to offer up their tanker trucks that were fully stocked. ATB Financial and Mountain View Credit Union provided water, sandwiches, cookies, pizza, and chips for all emergency services and county staff.

Before the meeting adjourned, Bremer confirmed their plans for the near future.
“Our engineers are already on board transferring our water system into their records. We have our engineers with a lot of our records that we can collect from them so they can run our SCADA (computer infrastructure) system,” said Bremer.

Occupational Health and Safety has been notified. 19 people work out of the county office.
A few places in Drumheller and area are being considered as a place for a satellite office. The Town of Drumheller offered their newly purchased Public Works Building, and ATCO Electric offered a large wing of their new shop. Both locations are in the industrial zone of Drumheller. Stettler and Delia also offered temporary spaces for them to stay in.
Updates will be released on the Starland County Facebook Page as more information is revealed.

mailphotos by Terri Huxley