Alena Liddell’s Grade 3 class from the Drayton Christian School put Town Council in the hot seat last week when they attended the June 18 regular meeting of council.
Students gathered in the middle of the chambers and took turns putting councillors on the spot with some well-thought out questions.
Luke: Is it hard to be a mayor?
Mayor Nancy Dodds: Some days it is very hard to be a mayor. Days like today it’s easy. I get to enjoy the company of great friends and celebration and then having lots of fun. But there are days when it’s hard, like when I’m having to deal with big problems in the community like homelessness or [when] we have a wildfire in our community. Those are days that are very difficult.
Bennett: What does the town council do?
Councillor Rick Evans: There’s lots of responsibilities when you are a councillor. In general, we are responsible for making sure that the Town is run well and the people who live [here] expect us to make sure that the roads are good, that we give them water [and it] keeps coming out of their taps [so] they can keep flushing their toilets. We also have special committees that we’re on. We make decisions regarding many different things, [like] parks and recreation. The previous council brought the pool to town. So that’s all things that we try to make happen. We try to listen to the residents of the Town and their concerns and fix them.
Councillor Amila Gammana: I think Councillor Evans pretty much covered almost all of it. Basically, I guess our responsibility is to set up policy and direction for the municipality.
Basically when we come to a decision we talk about it, I’m sure you do that in the class as well. When there’s some discussion, you say your side of things and maybe your friends will say something else. But we discuss that and then decide whether we go this way or the other way. So that’s basically what we do here. And then our good Administration will take that information and, you know, try to make that happen in the community. So, that’s basically what happens [in the] day-to-day here [when] we have meetings.
Councillor Tom McGee: Bennett, what do you think are the problems we have in the town?
Dodds: What do you think is a problem we might have? Maybe cutting grass, or too much snow?
Bennett: The pollution in the air.
McGee: So Bennett, as each councillor has suggested, we need to hear from citizens. But it depends on the seasons. So in the wintertime everyone’s wondering “When are you going to clear the snow? Are you gonna clear the sidewalks and how fast are you going to do that?” So we get that kind of pressure coming into Administration.
In the summertime, [it’s] dandelions, cutting the grass or potholes. We’ll hear those kinds of things that we need to take care of [in] our community. And then the other thing is that the mayor, Nancy Dodds, is really keen on putting out flowers and things like that to make the community a beautiful place to be.
Sophia: How can you create more job opportunities for our community?
Councillor Colin Clarke: There’s lots of things we can do. One of the things we can do is support the businesses that are here. We do have lots of businesses. Places like Weyerhaeuser or places… in oil and gas. What we can do is support those businesses and make sure that they’re thriving, making sure that they’re doing well, and also asking them what are the things we can do to help them.
Otherwise, there’s other things we can do. We can talk to the provincial government, like our premier, Danielle Smith. We can talk to the federal government, and to the Prime Minister. We can talk to them about things that they can do to help us with our community. There’s lots and lots of different things we can do.
Charlotte: Why do you do town council in the same building as the library?
CAO Jocelyn Whaley: Administration only needs a certain amount of space and that leaves room for the library to be in the same building. So, people can come and talk to administration and council at the same time as they go get books and use the computers.
Korbyn: Are you part of a society?
Dodds: No, we are not. Council is its own body… We’re all council members and we serve the community…Certain committees in the community are identified as a society, the library is one of them, Rotary is a society, the food bank is a society, the Drayton Valley Tourism and Hospitality Authority is a society, but the Town of Drayton Valley is not.
Addy: How much money do you make as a mayor?
Dodds: When you’re on council as a mayor and as councillor, you’re paid an honorarium. So what that means is you’re paid to serve the community, to go out to talk to individuals in the community, to read through our agendas, to engage with businesses and things like that. And then you have meeting fees that you get, and sometimes we have to go to conferences. So it all depends on how much work you’re putting in as a councillor.
