The Town of Cochrane is looking to see how it stacks up against other municipalities in the region.
Cochrane council authorized a maximum expenditure of $15,000 from the 2014 corporate services operating budget to be used for the Municipal Benchmarking Initiative, a program that compares several factors of the 12 participating municipalities.
Mayor Truper McBride voiced his concern that if Cochrane simply aimed to achieve the same results in all areas that the other participant communities did, we would essentially have one municipality.
McBride said Cochrane must remain unique and not get caught up in a race to meet everyone else.
Councillor Ivan Davies concurred, saying, “Who are we trying to be here?” adding that we should be Cochrane, not Banff or anywhere else.
The initiative is an attempt to create a more formal process to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery in communities.
This current round of funding is for phase two of the benchmarking project.
The town intends to thoroughly vet the benchmarking initiatives to ensure they can be both qualitatively and quantitatively justified, report findings to council and have a public report for residents.
In 2013, council approved $15,000 for the project.
Town CAO Julian deCocq and deputy CAO Lori Craig will be attending the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association convention in November and will discuss the finding of the Benchmarking Initiative to determine the program’s value to Cochrane.
Morning, afternoon or evening?
Cast aside Cochrane’s multi-million dollar projects like the Aquatic and Arts Centres, transit, Riverfront Park and a new RCMP station, and you find yourself engorged in a conversation about when is the best time to discuss those multi-million dollar endeavours.
Council members revisited whether its meetings should again be scheduled for 1 p.m. every second Monday, instead of the current 6 p.m.
Councillor Ivan Brooker brought forward a notice of motion on the matter, saying that with new councillors being an inevitability for the next four-year term, there will be a steep learning curve for those new members, and attempting to soak in all the information after a day’s work could pose challenging.
After a lengthy discussion that included an amendment from councillor Jeff Toews to split the times between afternoon and evening, council approved scheduling meetings for 1 p.m. on the second Monday of the month and 6 p.m. the fourth Monday.
The next council will be free to make any changes to the schedule it wishes.
