With the announcement from the Government on Jan. 22 that a revised Municipal Government Act (MGA) will be in place by 2016, Beiseker Mayor Ray Courtman said, though the Village council hasn’t yet discussed what changes they’d like to see in the MGA, he would like to see more self-governing ability given to municipalities.
“I think municipalities need to have a little more autonomy and the ability to do things a little more easily,” Courtman said.
He said, though the Village has not yet submitted input for the review, “we’ve been discussing it at AUMA (Alberta Urban Municipalities Association) for a number of years.”
He added as a council the Village will be discussing it in the upcoming months and submitting its input.
The MGA is the legislative framework in which all municipalities and municipal entities across the Province of Alberta operate.
The last major consolidation of the MGA took place in 1995.
Courtman said it’s important for municipalities to offer input on the revision despite the size of the municipality.
“We are obviously a very small municipality,” he said. “Cities have a much bigger stake in any revisions to the MGA but as smaller players we have to be recognized too.”
Courtman said he would like any revisions to the MGA to include streamlining the process to become a municipality.
“Langdon, for instance, is much larger than some of the towns and it’s still a hamlet. I think it’s doing those folks a disservice because they are not being represented.”
He added, it should be a priority for municipalities to stay independent and dissolving of municipalities “should be avoided at all costs” because the problems they had as independent municipalities simply follow them into the new entity.
“They end up with the same problems and now don’t have near the representation they had before,” he said.
The current MGA review began in 2012 and has involved input from more than 1,200 written submissions, and more than 1,500 people at 77 community meetings, according to a Jan. 22 release from the Province.
“Quite often we receive intermittent requests (from municipalities) to look at one thing or another and (we) collectively felt it was time for an intermittent review,” said Municipal Affairs (MA) Press Secretary Matthew Grant, adding there is no set schedule for when the Act needs to be reviewed.
The review has so far identified seven areas for discussion: provincial-municipal relations; accountability and transparency; governance and municipal viability; regional decision-making; municipal revenues; property assessment and taxation; and growth management.
Though Grant said there are no scheduled meetings in Rocky View County to further review the MGA, regularly scheduled roundtable discussion will be held with AUMAs, Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties, and the cities of Edmonton and Calgary.
Completion of the MGA review is anticipated to be in 2016.
