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Town of Stettler continues to navigate its way through COVID-19 crisis

Municipality is in steady communications with surrounding communities as well
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The Town of Stettler continues to make its way through the COVID-19 pandemic, touching base with other municipalities to share ideas of navigating the unprecedented crisis.

“The organization of the Town of Stettler is as a corporate body - we aren’t unlike an individual in the fact that we have to reach out for our own organizational ‘mental health’ to other organizations. We’ve been included in a variety of telephone weekly town halls with a lot of our southern municipal neighbours led by Drumheller, and a number of the bigger counties, too,” said CAO Greg Switenky.

“We get on the phone and talk about what’s going on in our municipalities, and we glean from what other municipalities might be trying or doing whether it be in their communities or with their staff or with their budgets.

“We tend to try to not re-invent the wheel and put it all on just the shoulders of the individual team here at the Town of Stettler, but also recognize there are great people in our sister organizations out there that come up with good stuff.”

Other municipalities also glean from what local officials can share as well, for example in terms of when to close something down in the community due to COVID-19 concerns.

“It’s about the commonality - we are all in this together and we all use each other’s resources. We take what we need from comments being made by their professional communications staff. And most of us smaller communities do not have the resources, people or skill sets to do some of this.”

As he noted, the pandemic of course knows no boundaries so there aren’t concerns over jurisdictional boundaries when it comes down to the work of informing the public.

In terms of direct assistance to residents, there are also initiatives such as utility and tax payment deferrals.

Residents may defer utility payments for up to three months for the billing period of April 1st – June 30th.

Monthly bills will continue to be distributed to residents and businesses; however, no penalty fees, service disconnections or utility fee transfers to taxes will be applied to any utility account until July 31st.

The new due date for the payment of 2020 taxes is Oct. 30th.

Rather than charging the regular penalty of three per cent to current taxes unpaid by the last working day of June, followed by the nine per cent penalty applied to current taxes not paid by the last working day of July, both penalties will be combined into one 12 per cent penalty, to be charged on Nov. 2nd on any current taxes remaining unpaid.

As a temporary payment option, taxpayers may defer tax payments, without penalty, to the last six months of the year (July – December) by signing up for the Pre-Authorized Withdrawal (PAW) Plan.

The full year’s taxes will be divided into six equal payments; billing for this plan would commence on the first working day of July and conclude in December.

Please note that this option is only available for the 2020 taxation year.

Any resident who wants to defer the payment of their utility bills and that are currently enrolled in the monthly direct debit plan must contact the Town office to cancel the monthly payments, and later contact the Town to reinstate the direct debit plan.

“The Town would like to remind residents that this deferral assistance does not waive tax and utility payments; we encourage residents who are able to maintain their regular payments to do so,” noted a release.

Meanwhile, Switenky noted that, “Sometimes, it’s very easy for us to say, ‘Well, where is the money for us - nobody has cut us a cheque’,” he said of municipalities in the current crisis.

“But we’ve expressed our appreciation that the government of Canada and the government of Alberta - their primary focus is on, as it should be, our residents and our businesses who in turn help to keep our coffers going,” he said.

“At least once a week we talk with our MP and our MLA to express our concerns on where we are seeing the gaps that our citizens aren’t being able to apply for,” he said, adding that it’s heartening to see the range of supports that are being made available. “It’s certainly helped with some of the gaps we were finding our employers being challenged with,” he said.

In the meantime, Switenky said there is plenty of maintenance work going on around town with the pandemic forcing shut-downs such as with the local pool.

“It’s the same thing with some of our sports fields - we have a couple of soccer pitches and ball diamonds where the grass is almost unplayable for some of our youth teams.”

The plan was to take one out of commission each year over a five-year plan.

“But if there is possibly no sports this spring, let’s get as many of them done now as we can,” he said. “And we recognize too that although there aren’t a lot of confirmed COVID-19 cases in our area, it doesn’t mean we aren’t moving towards a peak over the next three to four weeks.”

As to town workers, he said they’ve gone to a rotational, essential service continuity plan.

Switenky said the Town is also optimistic about the federal Summer Jobs Program. “My understanding of it is that they would pay up to 100 per cent of a minimum wage in the province of Alberta which is significant for us,” he said, adding that currently it’s about waiting for confirmation about the program.



Mark Weber

About the Author: Mark Weber

I've been a part of the Black Press Media family for about a dozen years now, with stints at the Red Deer Express, the Stettler Independent, and now the Lacombe Express.
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