COCHRANE - A budget survey has resulted in a call for affordable housing and prioritization of mental health and addiction support. It also shows that not everyone is a fan of the pitch for selling lots as low as $10.
The results were presented at Cochrane council's Jan. 9 meeting.
The budget survey launched in November on Let's Talk Cochrane, the town's online engagement tool, said director of corporate services Vanessa Vachon.
Thirty-one people responded to it. The assumption related to the low response rate was because it’s a new platform, Vachon said.
Coun. Sylvie Charron-Lemieux said she “was a little disappointed in the number of people who responded.”
“And also, my comments are, I mean, I don't think there's a lot of surprises there,” she said, in response to the survey results.
Services that were most important to those who answered included roads and sidewalks (29) in addition to health and social services such as physician recruitment and senior subsidies (26).
Other services of importance included waste management (11), recreation (10), fire and emergency (10), planning and development (9), building a green and sustainable community (9), tourism, festivals and events (8), economic opportunities and industrial development (7), as well as parks and outdoor spaces (6).
In terms of roads, consistent concerns included sidewalk maintenance, snow removal and communication about road closures.
“As a person with aging parents, I think fixing sidewalks and making the downtown more accessible in the long winters is necessary. Having to climb over banks to get from parking spaces to the sidewalk and having banks down the centre of the street is not ideal," reads one of the responses.
While another respondent had similar concerns about the town’s roads, there were also concerns about affordable housing, including the $10 lot sales.
“We can't move forward if we can't address the problems this community already has. We have flash floods in certain parts of town every time it rains, our roads are literally undrivable, and snow removal in this town isn't done at night when it should be causing traffic nightmares throughout multiple sections of town for days at a time, yet we want to sell lots for 10 bucks to try to get more people to live here,” they wrote.
“Cochrane can’t handle the problems it already has. Everybody likes the flashy, fly-by-night ideas, but fix the existing problems before daydreaming of far-fetched ideas to try to get people to locate here.”
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Another person noted that cheap properties won’t fix the town’s current issues.
“Smooth Rock Falls did this and it didn’t work,” they wrote.
More visible options and support for mental health and addiction services, urgent calls for immediate mental health support for youth, specific needs identified for addiction prevention among youth, urgent calls for intervention in public schools to address issues like self-harm and substance use among kids, were also noted concerns amongst several respondents.
“Kids are self-harming, using substances, etc. at an alarming rate. Intervention needs to happen in public school,” wrote a respondent.
