Mayor Yargeau says growth the focus for Penhold in 2019

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“We hope to see some growth along the Highway 2 and 42 corridor the same as them,” he exclaims. “So we’re really starting to see a lot of this take shape. Nothing is done yet but nothing happens overnight either, so we had a great year as far as moving forward with our vision.”

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Yargeau says 2018 also offered a chance to showcase the community and its facilities during the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in August, where people from all over central Alberta came to watch Sweden and Finland played at the Penhold Regional Multi-Plex.

However, Yargeau says the biggest challenge over the past year was preparing for the legalization of cannabis October 17.

“It’s a contentious issue anywhere you go,” he laments. “There’s strong opinions in having to deal with it within our role as a municipality and trying to explain to residents at the same time, what exactly the municipalities are allowed and not allowed to do, as opposed to the province and federal government what’s already been decided. That was by far the most challenging part of 2018 and I’m thankful that it’s over.”

Yargeau also admits to having strong feelings on how the whole process came about.

“I feel like municipalities were sort of given the short end of the stick there and made to make a lot of decisions that we probably shouldn’t have been making,” he explains. “We really didn’t have any control over it.”

With both a federal and provincial election expected in 2019, Yargeau anticipates more uncertainty in the months ahead.

“It’s important to remember with us too we spent the last year and a half, close to two years without an MLA anyway,” exclaims Yargeau. “Of course we have one now with the recent by-election but we’ve dealt with a lot of uncertainty in the provincial realm as far as local representation goes for quite a while. So it’s great that we have an MLA (Devin Dreeshen) now.”

In terms of provincial funding, Yargeau says it’s tough to plan when you don’t know what’s coming through the MSI (Municipal Sustainability Initiative).

“It’s hard to make decisions based on unknowns,” he explains. “The province is being pretty tight-lipped about what they’re going to do and of course an election might change all of that anyways. So 2019 is going to be a very interesting year with a lot of unknowns for towns as far as funding goes in the future.”

Moving forward, Yargeau expects both residential and commercial growth to be their biggest challenge in the coming months.

“For many years throughout central Alberta, municipalities were able to rely on increased growth to sort of buffer any tax increases,” adds Yargeau. “Over the last number of years we haven’t seen that growth, residential or commercial so it’s important that we do our best to make Penhold an attractive place for those commercial growth opportunities. That’s really going to be our main focus, is working with The County and with the landowners around that Highway 2 and 42 corridor to bring in some commercial growth.”

Yargeau thanks his councilors for sharing in their challenges and accomplishments in the past year.

“We live in a really great town and the feedback that we’ve received from residents whether good or bad, we always love to hear,” he exclaims. “We have a really involved town and I just want to say thank you to all the residents of Penhold. I hope they had a really great 2018 and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, I look forward to 2019.”