‘Say it ain’t so, Joe! Say it ain’t so!’
This quote is famously attributed a young baseball fan who expressed his shock to Shoeless Joe Jackson on the day the baseball legend (allegedly) admitted during testimony to a grand jury that he was one of eight Chicago White Sox baseball players who took bribes to let the Cincinnati Reds win the 1919 World Series.
In all likelihood, the quote is more of an urban legend than reality; there’s no court record of Jackson admitting he was involved in fixing the game, and, publicly, he always denied it.
However, it could be just as applicable if you replaced the name “Joe” with that of “Woodlands County,” and its effect would be just as devastating to those people who believe Intermunicipal Collaborative Agreements (ICFs) are actually possible.
Last year, Alberta Municipal Affairs gave every municipality until April 2020 to sign ICFs with their neighbours on a wide variety of issues, ranging from shared water and sewage to joint land-use planning.
If municipalities could not come to an agreement with one of their neigbours, the province would mandate arbitration. We all know how difficult that is, having watched Barrhead’s struggle to come up with a recreational funding agreement between the town and county.
That being said, when you looked at the type of relationship between Woodlands County and the Town of Whitecourt, you would have thought they could acrimoniously complete the task Municipal Affairs had given municipalities was possible. In fact, as former Woodlands County CAO Luc Mercier said in February 2017, the provine was hoping to use them as a model for other municipalities to follow.
However, the model the province and other municipalities have pointed to as an example of how adjacent jurisdictions can work together for the common good is not as simple as we had been led to believe.
Whitecourt media are now reporting that Town of Whitecourt councillors have received a letter from Woodlands County mayor Jim Rennie that, effective January 2020, Woodlands County would be terminating the Intermunicipal Cost-Sharing Contribution Agreement between the two municipalities.
If the county had not informed the town of its decision to opt out of the agreement by a certain date, it would have automatically been renewed until 2022.
In the letter, Rennie states due to increasing financial pressures like increased infrastructure costs, a decrease in linear assessment, and a large amount of uncollected taxes from industry, the county can no longer meet its obligations under the agreement.
The good news is that Rennie concluded his letter saying he is hopeful the two councils can come to a new agreement before the current one expires as are Town of Whitecourt councillors.
I certainly hope they can, not only because of the impact on both Woodlands County and Whitecourt residents if they don’t come to a new agreement, but because the rest of us need to see that such an agreement is possible.
