Concerns Raised About Communication Between Municipalities in the Southwest

A former canadidate for mayor in Shaunavon is hoping to encourage more communication between municipalities in the southwest.

Joel Sopp says one of his main concerns is that some communities are handcuffing each other by holding major events at the same time.

Full interview with Joel Sopp

"There's a very a huge gap, I think, between the communication on what weekends were available, and what weekends worked best for some communities. There's a lot of centennials that happened the same weekend as other events in the southwest last year," Sopp said. "I really feel, honestly, that if the towns and the RMs and the cities take a few minutes once every three months, just to take the time to give each other a call and say 'what's going on in your neighbourhood,' and try to work the best that we can to make these events all functional and well-attended in the southwest."

He proposes a conference call between mayors or municipal officials from across the region every three months to update one another on event planning and work towards the most ideal dates.

"I think just having that open communication is going to portray the southwest as a strong entity to the rest of the province," Sopp added.

He sent his proposal to all municipalities and media in hopes of at least encouraging the start of a discussion, and one of the first municipal leaders to respond publicly was Maple Creek Mayor Barry Rudd.

Rudd told our newsroom Tuesday that he does agree with Sopp's concerns that the municipalities do have to work better together, and they are already working to improve that.

"In 2013, we have all made a committment to talk more together through the Southwest Municipal Government Committee, which is one of the first things that we should look at, because if we can get that group together to be more effective, we're going to have better results," Rudd said.

The Southwest Municipal Government Committee is a group of urban and rural municipal representatives that meets every month, generally in Swift Current, and one of the things Rudd would like to see is increased representation at the meetings.

Full interview with Barry Rudd

"They're attended by probably 20 urban and rural municipalities as representation there, but it's still something that we would like better attendance at," he added. "Maybe we can host these meetings in other places, or maybe we can spend a little bit of money on doing better communication to get more members and to get more municipalities there."

Rudd added in his response to Sopp that a number of municipalities attended the Intermunicipal Conference held just last month in Regina, and the main point of the meetings was to work together as regions and make their dollar go further, especially when it comes to healthcare and infrastructure priorities.