2024 Summer MLC spots still available

It’s not too late to register for a Summer Municipal Leaders’ Caucus (MLC) event taking place near you. Spots are still available in:

• Bonnyville – June 13
• St. Albert – June 14
• Stirling – June 26
• Innisfail – June 27

Summer MLC is a prime opportunity to provide input on ABmunis’ approach to high-priority topics. To get the most out of the event, we ask municipalities to come prepared to share information on the water conservation targets, changes to local elections and governance, and infrastructure.

Water conservation targets

Municipalities across Alberta have been talking a great deal about water since early 2024 in preparation for a potential province-wide drought. This session will take a broader look at water demand and infrastructure water loss to renew ABmunis’ water use reduction targets.  Specifically, we are asking participants to share:

• What is your community’s current residential water usage in litres per person per day (L/c/d)?
• What do you know about leakage in your community’s water distribution system? How have you measured this?
• What programs/incentives/tools do you use currently to encourage water conservation?
• Don’t have that data available?  ABmunis wants to know what barriers you face to collecting data so we can explore solutions to overcome them.

Changes to local elections & governance

We have been vocal in raising concerns about the potential negative consequences of Bill 20. To better quantify the potential impacts of the changes introduced by the bill, and to help determine our further response, we would like to hear from you about:

• Costs involved in preparing and regularly maintaining a permanent list of electors.
• Costs involved in switching from electronic vote tabulators to manual counting where applicable.
• Costs involved by mandating a virtual option for public meetings
• Consequences that could result from other changes (e.g., enabling councillors to recuse themselves from voting due to real and perceived conflicts of interest, and limiting the number and length of public hearings).

We recognize that you may need more time to determine costs and consequences.  Regardless, we hope you will join this important conversation on how we move forward to protect fair elections and good governance.

Infrastructure

Our Summer MLC program includes an update on our infrastructure funding advocacy and research.  To support our work on your behalf we ask municipalities to bring one or two examples of infrastructure projects that are being deferred due to funding challenges.