At the beginning of every Council meeting, there is an opportunity to make public comments. At this meeting, a gentleman took the chance to address his concern regarding the changes that Minister of Education Dave Hancock is making regarding students with learning difficulties. The Provinces is wanting to integrate people with learning difficulties into regular classrooms. Now, this is not a municipal issue, but he simply wanted Council to be informed when we  have the chance to speak with MLA's. I really appreciate citizens who bring these issues to our knowledge. Its important to use all avenues possible to bring concerns forward.

 

Reg Milley, the CEO of Edmonton International Airports and Chairman of Port Alberta, came to speak about Port Alberta. I was very pleased to have this opportunity to ask Mr. Milley some questions. I have had concerns regarding Port Alberta. It has been a popular tag-line for the past few years but has seen, in my opinion, little progress. Port Alberta is known as an Inter model transportation hub. It is supposed to help facilitate business in the capital region. The question that I had, and have been pondoring for some time, is what sort of business would benefit from Port Alberta. Mr. Milley suggest that it can help with shipping logistics and better competitiveness for manufactures. Alberta is always challenged when it comes to manufacturing. There are 3 main issues that need to be resolved for manufacturing to work. First, access to markets. Alberta is in a low population area. We have to ship most of our good to larger markets. Second, cheap labour. If you have been living in our province for the past few years, you may know that when the oil field is active, even workers at McDonald's are going to make over average wages. Finally, expertise. This is something we do have going for us in Alberta. We have become experts in oil & gas and I hope energy in general. This is what we will need to capitalise on to help something like this get going. I'm Still a skeptic as to the feasibility of Port Alberta, but Mr. Milley did a good job answering my questions.

 

Inspector Jackson came to council to bring good news. The province has provided 2 more RCMP members to the Leduc detachment. This was a part of the Premiers election promise to add 300 new officers.

 

Black Gold Broadcasting also presented to Council and asked for a letter of support for there case to add a new FM radio station in Leduc. I will definitely support this and hope that other in the community will support this radio initiative also.

 

Alderman Young brought forward a motion to add $112,000 to sod soccer fields in Lede Park. I voted against this motion as I felt that this project has had it's scope change already twice to add more money to it. I would have preferred this to go through the regular budget process. We started with a project that just included irrigation we then expand the amount of irrigation and field improvements such as trees. I felt that if Parks determined that sod was the better way to go, they would have suggest this in the original project. The motion was passed and the funds will come from the Parks Reserve. I have issues with this also, as the Parks Reserve doesn't fund more that 5% of Parks liability.