Drayton Valley proud of accomplishments during a challenging 2020

“2020 was a challenging year but we did manage to have quite a few highlights,” says Drayton Valley Mayor Michael Doerksen.

Economic development was another goal for Drayton Valley last year, with a specific focus on expanding continuing education in the community. The first set of classes for the town’s Zero-Fee Tuition Program got underway in January 2020. The program encourages local students to remain in Drayton Valley as they pursue post-secondary education and brings students in from the surrounding regions. In December 2020, the Town of Drayton Valley announced a new partnership with the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension, which will offer continuing education courses to Drayton Valley and surrounding area residents starting in January 2021. The town also announced an education partnership with Northern Lakes College to offer distance education services to Drayton Valley residents out of the CETC starting in January 2021.

“Education has been something that our council has tried to move forward with quite a bit of effort,” says Doerksen.

The other main focus of economic development for the community has been supporting the emerging local hemp industry, which Mayor Doerksen says, is “Another economic initiative that the Town of Drayton Valley has been pushing hard on.”

Doerksen adds that the BioComposites Group in Drayton Valley, one of the larger hemp manufacturing facilities in North America, has secured and purchased a decorticator from HempCo. that will help BioComposites become a full-value chain in the hemp industry. Doerksen hopes this will help bring more hemp manufacturing businesses to the community to bolster the economy.

A long-running initiative that finally came to fruition in 2020 was the launch of Drake’s Handi-Bus, a senior transportation service around Drayton Valley. The town worked for several years with community stakeholders to raise funds for a wheelchair equipped vehicle that would offer affordable and accessible transportation to local seniors and those with mobility challenges. The bus service launched on November 16 and was something that Doerksen says was “definitely needed in the community.”

Another project that was years in the making and finally got the go-ahead in 2020 was the town’s new aquatic facility, thanks to federal grant funding. In August, the town was approved for and received grant funding under the Government of Canada’s Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), in the amount of $7,584,956 for the new aquatic facility.

After years of planning, Doerksen says the grant funding allowed the town to move forward with construction.

“That’s been 10 years in the works. This grant funding was kind of the last piece of the puzzle that we needed to have that move forward. A little bit of work has already been done at the site where it will be built, but the official groundbreak will be done this spring.”

“There’s really exciting things happening,” Doerksen adds. “It’s a fairly extensive list but all of it is really exciting for our community for 2020 and then moving that into 2021 as well.”

The town managed to complete the accomplishments while continuing to deal with the struggling energy industry and the repercussions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Doerksen says it has been a challenging time for the community since 2015 when oil and gas collapsed, but things were starting to pick up at the end of 2019 before the pandemic hit. While the pandemic added an extra burden to the community’s challenges, Doerksen says the economic issues from the last few years were still the main source of problems in 2020.

“I look at COVID-19 as being more of an amplifier effect on the challenges and lingering effects [from oil and gas]. Drayton Valley was and still is being impacted by some of the decisions made at the federal level when it comes to oil and gas activities. While there is hope on the horizon with some pipelines being built, the biggest challenge is certainly the energy investment in the area and whether or not we can get all levels of government to push in the right direction to help that industry.”

The Mayor notes that they understand at some point in time they may need to move away from oil and gas, but for now, there is still a lot of opportunity for the industry to rebound.

As for dealing with COVID-19 itself, Doerksen says it was a significant challenge for everyone after businesses and facilities had to close in the spring and again over the holidays, leaving people out of work.

“It’s tough for a community of our size because those businesses do employ a lot of people and having those temporary layoffs, even if they’re just temporary, you don’t know how long it’s going to be or how quickly it’s going to rebound.”

The long-term effects of the layoffs and pandemic, especially around the mental health impact, Doerksen says remains to be seen but the close community can help bring people together.

“Drayton Valley has always been a great community for that pulling together spirit, as our town motto is ‘pulling together.'”

Looking ahead to the new year, Doerksen says he hopes people will be able to get back to work soon and do what they love to do.

In the meantime, the town plans to continue to build on projects started last year and focus on economic development in 2021. The new aquatic facility will be the largest capital project of the year and will start construction in March or April, with a timeline of two years. Economic development includes adding more continuing education initiatives to create more programs and cover a full range of studies for the population. The town is also focused on continuing to prioritize support for the hemp industry, including manufacturing and local businesses interested in hemp.

“We’re hoping to touch base with all these organizations again and say Drayton Valley is open for business and we have everything that you guys need.”

by Erika Chorostil

Drayton Valley proud of accomplishments during a challenging 2020

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