Two bylaws amended during Town of Lamont meeting

BY JOHN MATHER

At their regular town council meeting Jan. 10, the town received correspondence from the Metrix Group outlining preparations for the town’s annual audit.

“There are some new requirements that municipalities need to prepare as part of the year-end 2023 filing,” said Chief Administrative Officer Rick Bastow. “We’re working with them to ensure our municipality is compliant.”

“Administration is working with them to finalize our year-end statements also.”

When asked, Bastow said the Town had a three-year contract with the firm.

Lamont received a request from the Town of Mundare to use some funds in a community partnership grant to complete a feasibility study on the town’s lagoon.

“Mundare is requesting that we support redesignating some of the funds in intermunicipal water and wastewater study be used for them to complete the study on their lagoon,” explained CAO Bastow. He went on to say

Lamont had done its feasibility using monies from the grant and there was still about $72,000 left in the fund.

The Mundare request was for $40,000 to be used from the fund, so Bastow suggested council approve the request.

Council voted in favour of allowing Mundare to access the funds.

Council passed a new community standards bylaw which essentially made a few changes to the existing bylaw.

Most of the changes were minor.

“The updates are intended to make the bylaw more efficient,” said Bastow. “And also to bring it up to comparable standards with neighbouring communities.”

Council was satisfied with the changes with no questions, although Councillor Perry Koroluk did wonder why the timeline for residents to remove snow from sidewalks was extended from 24-hours to 72-hours.

“We recognize municipalities generally choose snow removal to be within a 24-hour to 72hour cycle,” said Bastow. “We recognized that some residents had concerns with the 24-hour timeline, because of their work schedules or age. So we were able to extend that timeline.”

The lead from Tim’s 11 Cows throws his first rock of the third end in the team’s match with Crop Management during the Lamont Curling Club’s Farmers Bonspiel Jan. 14. When the dust settled on the two-day event, the bonspiel was won by the Starko Farms entry with Kolotylo Farms winning a spinoff to capture second place over third place finishers Maschmeyer Farms.