Mountain View County council approved the Budget for 2025 at last week’s meeting.
Reeve Angela Aalbers says it is includes $27 million dollars in operating expenses, excluding amortization, and about $33.5 million in capital budgets.
Probably one of the biggest projects that the County has done in a long time is the Acme Road upgrade – a $16.6 million project, according to Reeve Aalbers.
In 2017, she adds, the County set up a capital reserve policy which is money and funds that are used for developments on culture and recreation facilities within their urban partner municipalities. She says “council just updated that policy at our last council meeting and we have a maximum contribution to our urban centres of $125,000 a year for capital maintenance programs and then we have up to $1.25 million for large capital new projects. So Didsbury was able to capitalize on that fund, as was the Town of Olds and the Town of Sundre will be submitting something as well. Hopefully, we have all of our capital partners who are going to utilize our fund and get that money out there to the benefit of the communities.” The Town of Didsbury will use the County funding for a project that includes upgrades and repairs at the Didsbury Memorial Complex and at the Town’s baseball diamond.
She notes that another thing that Mountain View County council has spent a lot of time on over the last four years is their fire services agreements and they are really pleased that they now have a full-time fire chief in all of their departments. Reeve Aalbers points out that the Fire Chief has just started in Cremona and she believes a new Fire Chief is starting in Didsbury this year as well. She says “we’re very excited with the investments that the County has made in fire services supports to ensure that we are keeping up with the local needs of our communities.”
