The RM of Prince Albert recently received funding from the Provincial Government and is passing the windfall on to ratepayers. At their regular meeting on Thursday, October 8 the council decided to extend their tax discount until the end of 2020. The initial discount was part of the RM’s budget passed in May.
“What we did was we are using it to extend our seven percent tax discount to December 31. To give directly to the taxpayers, we extended it an extra two months,” Reeve Eric Schmalz said.
The amount of COVID-19 related funds that the RM received was over $210,000.
RM shop out for tender
The new RM Shop is ready to enter the tender phase after council finalized some ideas for the shop. In July, the province announced that the RM of Prince Albert received $511,961 for a new RM Shop as part of Municipal Economic Enhancement Program (MEEP) 2020.
“It’s going to tender for design. We wanted to make sure that we had our wish list ready so that when we did present it for tender the winning company or person would be able to have some framework to work with,” Schmalz said.
Beaver trapper policy
Changes to the beaver trapper policy will be discussed next season and the current concept will remain in place until February, 2021.
Fire agreements
Council also received a new fire agreement from St. Louis which they are waiting for some accuracy on before officially signing on. There was a change in retainer price to $7,500 but the RM was seeking to clarify before signing on for another three years. Rescue was added to the agreement with the St. Louis Fire Department. The RM has been working on the fire agreement with the Prince Albert Fire Department as well.
“The fire agreement for St. Louis there is still some minor changes. For Prince Albert we are still working with Prince Albert hoping to have some results, that one has been a while for sure,” he explained
Council discussing COVID-19 measures
Council also discussed mask policy for RM employees, which came from the Occupational Health and Safety meeting from Thursday morning. The matter will be discussed at November’s council meeting after some work is done by administration, this would involve policy around masks in shop trucks as well as hand sanitizer policy.
“It is just for employee safety,” Schmalz said.
The council also discussed adjustments to policy around sick leave regarding the COVID-19 pandemic related to matters such as self-isolation.
