The Eagle sat down with Cochrane Mayor Jeff Genung for an annual tradition – the Year in Review interview. Here are his thoughts on the highlights and lowlights of 2024.
Eagle: What were some of the highlights of last year for you?
Genung: I’m not a guy who spends a lot of time looking back. Looking at the year as a whole, I’d say it was a year of completion, and of planning. We started a bunch of projects and in 2024 we got them done – the Highway 1A corridor upgrades, the Centre Ave. project, the pathway from Cochrane Ranch to Glenbow.
I’m more of a bricks and mortar and concrete kind of guy. But we can’t build things without a plan. Over the past 20 years the Town has taken a lot of criticism, right or wrong, perceived or real, that we need to plan infrastructure, as growth is outpacing it. The Envision Cochrane 2050 document – that’s a big chunk of work. Community engagement and inputs, a year and a half of work, that will be completed tonight. Having that plan refreshed, modernized and ready to go is good.
The library Needs Assessment – that is exciting as well.
And we took a lot of heat over engaging and over-engaging in COLT (transit), asking and re-asking all these questions about COLT, but again, it’s a system we implemented in 2018 for the first time, and people forget that. In 2018 we had no transit. In 22 years we’ll be 100,000 people, and we’ll need much more than the transit system we have today. That’s not a lot of time to plan, so getting the next iteration of COLT implemented in 2025 is going to be a big deal.
So – completion and planning – that’s how I would capture it.
Planning isn’t the sexiest thing to talk about, but with a billion dollars of capital needs over the next ten years, if we don’t have the decisions and the planning down now, we could make some catastrophic, expensive mistakes.
Eagle: The Budget process was quite a bit different this year compared to last year. Last year was a bit ridiculous at certain points, with the debate circling around what council should be debating. This year was the opposite – the debate went quite smoothly. Were you happy with that?
Genung: Yes, I think it’s a snapshot of our entire organization. If you zoom out back to 2017, running for mayor I had all these aspirations of getting the community back on track, and I quickly realized we didn’t have an organization that kept up with the pace of growth. So having to invest in our organization was very difficult. It caused a lot of strain on council. It took two, three years. We had a bit of a revolving door there.
It's been a long, frustrating journey at times. But I feel we’re on the edge of being really able to deliver now.
Eagle: The $15M Glenbow infrastructure upgrade project had to be put off a year due to a mix-up with a grant. That will be a major disruption when that neighbourhood is torn up this summer. It’s going to be a mess.
Genung: Yes. But I would say on the flip side, when we’ve had wastewater incidents, people don’t want their front yard ripped up, but they also don’t want sewage in their basement.
Eagle: You’re aware of the condition of Big Hill Lodge and the need for a new seniors home. I visited them the other day. The walls are crumbling. The foundation is crumbling. The provincial government has to finalize their budget documents in December to get them all to the printers in January, so they’ll be ready for the spring. So someone in Edmonton knows now – or will very soon – whether Cochrane’s ask for support for a new lodge has been given the green light or not. Do you have any indication which way they’re leaning, given we were turned down last year?
Genung: No, we don’t have an answer. They allot a certain amount of money to seniors housing, then the administration doles out the money. Last year the story we got was there were more projects than there was money.
I care about seniors as much as anyone – I’m almost one. My parents are seniors, I talk to seniors regularly in this community, it’s so frustrating (to get the project moving forward).
The province recognizes there’s a problem, that there’s a need there. We’ve been told by the province to work with other organizations on how to partner to get a bigger grant dollar.
This is one of the things I have been working on that I haven’t been vocal about: at the end of the day, this building is going to be 50 millionish dollars and the province only gives grants up to about $13M, so if the Rocky View Foundation goes (hypothetically) say, to get a mortgage for $12M to round it off to $25M, where’s the other $25M coming from? Fundraising, endowments, gifts – where’s it coming from?
Eagle: In a previous conversation you remarked that a dream of yours was to come up a new idea for how towns and municipalities can raise money in a way other than taxes, fees, grants, etc. – all the ways that have been traditionally used. How’s that little project coming?
Genung: Great question. That should be something council and Administration are working on all the time. As the cost of living increases, and inflation . . . the provincial government continues to provide our allowance, but not quite what we need. So bridges and rec centres and libraries and so that billion dollars . . . I want to be able to deliver a community that’s the envy of the rest of the province. If we can come up with some revenue generating ideas – and I mean big ticket items – to offset taxes, that would set this community in the right direction for a long time.
