Council and administrators for the Municipality of Rhineland have emerged from a two day planning session with six priorities to focus on this term.
"We hope to set the stage for the next four years and then annual plans are supposed to be reflected in these priorities that we set for ourselves," explained Reeve Don Wiebe.
The priority areas identified as a result of the session include water management.
"That includes all aspects of water management. At the local level, various projects that need to be considered because of the pattern of rains and heavy rains, it creates some disparities in our municipality, and we'll see what we can do with that, and then the provincial drains. That includes working with the conservation district. So, it's that big umbrella of managing our water carefully, or as best as we can and what needs to be in place," explained Wiebe.
Lobby for access to more potable water is another area of focus.
"Because of the some of the businesses that want to expand," said Wiebe. "And so we've got a point to try and lobby for increased supply of potable water. It is particularly critical in Spring when ag sector uses so much of it for spraying and that kind of thing. So that's a bit of a crunch point there for us. So we're pushing that."
The third priority is ongoing access to better communications.
"That is, of course, cell phones in our municipality. There's many dead spots in our municipality and it's aggravating for people. Also, sometimes that compromises emergency responses for police departments and the fire department and so on. So we're working hard on that. We'll keep that up. We had that on four years, but we've got to keep it on there until that improves," said Wiebe.
Fourth is governance and organizational excellence, and what is required to exercise effective leadership and governance and work towards organizational excellence.
"That's one of the objectives we talked a bit about as we hear stories of bad governance and those kind of things, and we don't want to be part of that," added Wiebe.
Rounding out the list is responsible and sustainable economic growth, and regional collaboration.
Now that a strategy has been hammered out for the next four years, Wiebe says the group will need to flesh-out the strategies for achieving these goals.
The planning session also offered an opportunity for officials to review the Municipality's vision and mission statements, and core values.
"I think it offers guidance and forces our municipality to listen to what people are saying," said Wiebe. "We're keeping in mind that we are all about community service. It gives us a focus and I think it grounds us that if something comes up, Council can examine that issue in light of the vision, the mission and the values."
As for a plan for 2023/24, that strategy is being worked out as officials hammer out a budget for the year.