Bonnyville council has agreed to a proposed fee schedule by the Alberta Bilingual Municipal Association membership (ABMA).
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The decision was made by ABMA at their Feb. 15 meeting. They decided to present a proposal for the introduction of membership fees for current members as well as municipalities wishing to join.
The group reviewed models from similar associations and came up with the following fee schedule:
Villages – $500
Towns under 2,000 population – $500
Towns over 2,000 population – $700
Cities – $1,100
Municipal Districts/Counties – $1,100
Bonnyville Mayor Elisa Brosseau has sat on the ABMA for seven years and has chaired it for six. She gave some insight into how they came to the decision to charge for membership.
“We’ve essentially run without any operating money at all, and we’ve been doing a really good job. Currently we have 15 members, so 15 municipalities who are members. In that time, we’ve worked diligently on building relationships and collaboration, most notably, the project we have from the provincial government. They sought us out and gave us $75,000 to work on bilingual signage in municipalities,” said Brosseau.
She says ABMA was just awarded a contract to expand French initiatives.
“We were just awarded a project in collaboration with some municipalities out of Quebec, the provincial government there who’s looking at expanding French language and French initiatives throughout Canada,” said Brosseau.
Without any operating money, it makes applying for grants more difficult.
“We’re getting to a point where we need the operating dollars. In order to apply from grants, a lot of times, they’re looking for buy-in, they’re looking for the matching funding, which we don’t have,” said Brosseau.
“We’re at a crux where we need to build and keep these momentums going.”
The decision was then made to propose a fee schedule but consideration was taken to figure out exactly how much to charge.
“What we took a look at was the one from NAAGO (Northeast Alberta Alliance for Growth and Opportunities) is what I proposed, and we just slashed that in half. We thought it was a good breakdown as far as members and villages, towns, cities, that’s how we came up with this,” explained Brosseau.
Coun. Phil Kushnir believes groups like ABMA are an asset to the town.
“Anytime we can collaborate with other municipalities and other groups like this, I think is a good thing. NAAGO has been fantastic for the region I think,” he said.
Council passed a motion to inform ABMA it is in agreement with the proposed fee schedule.
ABMA is a member association that services member municipalities in Alberta which are either declared bilingual at a federal level and/or support bilingualism as a driver for economic growth.
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