Around 30 people, including all of village council and several representatives from Paintearth County, gathered at the Halkirk Community Hall on July 8.
They had gathered to meet with Dee Deveau and Ross Zimmermann, both employees of the Alberta Government's Department of Municipal Affairs to navigate the next steps for the community after the Minister had approved a request by the council to re-do the municipality's dissolution vote.
Halkirk has already undergone the process once, in a vote in March 2022, which saw the village narrowly vote in favour of remaining as an independent municipality.
A previous council had requested permission from the minister to hold a dissolution vote due to questions about the viability of the community; the province funded a viability report in 2021 which looked at all aspects of the village's finances, infrastructure, and services, and generated a number of recommendations.
In the time since the previous vote, for a number of reasons, including a changing of council, the municipality has struggled to follow those recommendations or provincial directives which came down as part of remaining an independent municipality, so the new council requested another vote.
As the community had already undergone the viability review process, according to Deveau, the project lead, the timelines leading to the next Halkirk vote will be significantly more condensed than the earlier one.
The first stage of the project was the first public engagement meeting on July 8. Following that meeting, Deveau and Zimmerman will work with the rest of their team in Edmonton to update the previous viability report.
"We're not throwing out the 2022 report," said Deveau, noting that instead, everything that the community has done since the last dissolution vote will be looked at and added while some sections, primarily surrounding the village infrastructure deficit, will remain untouched.
The updated report will look at five areas to determine the viability of the community to stand on it's own.
It will look at the tax collection rate, population change, the age of the community's infrastructure, financial reporting and any requirements of ministerial intervetion.
According to Zimmermann, the five areas looked at are just five of 13 big-picture items the province looks at when they review viability, and when compared to other similar municipalities Halkirk flags under four of them.
"Halkirk is the highest in Alberta (for flags)," said Zimmermann.
During the discussion, it was also noted that Halkirk is also the smallest community in Alberta that is standing on its own and hasn't folded into a larger county.
As part of the updated report, the team at the province is planning to look at data they have access to, contact the village administration, county administration, and look at feedback received from surveys that have been sent out to village residents.
The surveys are due back to the province by July 19.
Once all the data is collected, a rough timeline put forward by the duo will have the report released to the Halkirk electorate in early September, a pre-vote meeting in October, and another dissolution vote held before the end of October.
Based on the results of the vote, the minister will make his recommendation to the provincial cabinet on whether the community should remain a village or be dissolved.
According to Deveau, if the village should be dissolved, the province aims to do so for the beginning of the new year as that is when the municipal year ends and would make the transition easier for the county, but ultimately the decision would be up to cabinet based on the minister's recommendation.
Should the village vote to remain an independent municipality, the council and administration will be required to follow another set of directives from the minister and conduct annual reporting to ensure that the village is moving towards viability.
If anyone has any questions about the viability review or the ongoing process, they can contact the team in Edmonton at viability@gov.ab.ca or call 780-427-2225.