Niverville Mayor says 2023 was a year where they accomplished many things.
Myron Dyck says,
“Obviously, when you have a strong community and vibrant growth, you're trying to be economically and environmentally sustainable.”
Mayor Dyck starts by noting the beginnings of several parks in town.
“Station Park, which is one of the original well sites in the community. So, that's kind of an ongoing project that was initiated last year. Then there was the completion of the dog park. We have a number of pet owners in this community. It's been made larger, and now we are waiting for the grass to grow. Getting that park finished took a couple of years, and so, we appreciate people's patience while we were trying to get that done.”
Dyck continues noting they did an overhaul of the bathrooms inside the Centennial Arena.
“Just to make them more accessible and also, just to refresh them because they were probably original to the building back from 1967. So, that is now done.”
“Then to help with pedestrian and active transportation, we completed the bridge project connecting east and west Niverville. And then, there are some ongoing projects, like the (Regional) Wastewater Management Project, which is a multi-year thing. So that was started with four of our neighboring municipality partners.”
Dyck continues the 2023 town project list with an item still to be completed, the RCMP detachment inside the Niverville Town Offices, along with other businesses council is still waiting on construction to begin, like the movie studio and new hotel.
When it comes to what challenges Niverville faced in 2023, Dyck notes first off, inflation, but says it’s not their council alone that is struggling with it.
“Many councils across the province are wrestling with it. We're doing our asset management studies and the impact on the increase in the minimum wage, which, you know, everyone deserves a proper wage, but at the same time, that is a chunk out of your budget. Then that must be accounted for and then just staffing in in general. There are still opportunities to work with the town and you know, we continue to look for employees, though we already have a great team. But with a growing community comes a need to also growing your employee base as well.”
“So, a huge thank you to all our employees for the wonderful work that they do here.”
Dyck shares what 2023 has taught Council.
“We’ve learnt what patience is, and then when you think you have it, you learn some more because you'll have the opportunity to practice it. For example, the traffic light standards are something we understand is brought over in shipments at only certain times of the year, so you can go sometimes a while like, I'm talking not even months, but years, you know, to see some of these things come to fruition. I’m like, “what's the hold up?”
“We’ve also learned how important it is to prioritize. You know the old saying that if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. And yet, there are many needs in our community, and so council is constantly wrestling with the very valid requests we get from residents, and from the rest of council, and we really appreciate the input from council and from residents, but then you have to start applying time, and resources, number one being labor, and also the cost of goods, and the task of staying on budget has potential to become daunting.”
Dyck adds, while everyone is feeling the pinch these days, yet projects still need to be completed while Niverville council and residents are asking for new ones to be started.
“One of the significant things I would say about this challenge is that council would love to do more things, but Council has to face the reality of what inflation is doing to the budget, along with ongoing cost increases. So, the focus this year has been to look at next year (2024) in a term of, OK, let's see what we can get done and what boxes can get checked off, and that will allow us then to move on to some other things on the list.”
Noting the “things” on the list include a new Library, pool, firehall, campground, another park for recreational purposes and the list goes on.
Dyck says that when he was first elected to council in 2004 their budget was much smaller.
“We dealt with projects that were maybe in the thousands and maybe some in the hundreds of thousands. But now everything costs hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. And so, while the community is growing, the upfront cost might sound like a project is very expensive. We have to purchase the item or approve the plan now, which will mean we’ve saved money in the long-run and it's going to last for years, even once we triple the size of our community.”
He adds, “We have to really be mindful of the stress on financial burdens, and so, the challenge is wanting to do more, but also balancing that with fiscal responsibility.”
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