County Council Review
Amy Gregson – Times Reporter
Road Banning
Wheatland County decided to ban one raod at their March 2 meeting because of heavy trucks damaging roads.
The only road that was ban is located near Carseland, but some roads north, west and east of Strathmore are being monitored.
“They are going to be monitoring them if they show excess wear beyond what is normal when the thaw starts coming out,” said Reeve Ben Armstrong.
There will not be a county-wide ban, but haulers will only be allowed to carry 50 per cent of their load.
“If you want to haul half your load than I guess you can, but there’s no pay in that,” Armstrong said. He said the ban shouldn’t last long, but will continue through the spring thaw because that is when the roads take a beating. The ban gives them a chance to stiffen.
If they need to put a ban on a road, Armstrong must sign off on it and it will come into effective the next morning. It will not occur during the day.
Area Structure Plan, Growth Management Study
The Growth Management Study and Area Structure Plan for Rosebud and Nightingale are under way after the county opened the proposals they received.
The Growth Management Study is happening so the county can determine where reasonable growth can occur in the county.
The Area Structure Plan deals with the development that is occurring within the hamlets of Rosebud and Nightingale.
“The area structure plan will go in there, take the boundaries of those two areas and give us a plan of how the growth can happen there so that it’s regulated, control and makes sense,” said Armstrong.
He said developers are going into these communities and rather each of them trying to come up with their individual plans the county is coming up with the plan.
“When they go in and develop than they fit within that and have to follow the regulations. It’s the same as the area west of Strathmore for the industrial growth,” said Armstrong.
The county sent out 21 proposals to companies they thought would be interested, with five sending in their own proposal for the Area Structure Plan and six for the Growth Management Study.
The planning department will now go through the proposals and make recommendations to the councilors.
The county hopes to have the study completed by the end of September.
Gravel Policy
After a number of unsettled bills for gravel a decision has been made in regards to how ratepayers will be able to get gravel from the County.
A pre-pay system will now be in place for anyone looking for gravel. This has changed from the previous policy where ratepayers could just call up the loader and pay later for gravel.
“I hate to see that we have to do that way,” said Armstrong. “We just have too many outstanding gravel bills from rate payers that are saying ‘I didn’t receive that gravel’ or ‘I can’t remember getting those.’”
Ratepayers will now have to come to the County office and pre-pay for the load of gravel they want.
Each load of gravel will require one ticket, which will be given to the loader at the site.
Haulers will have to know how much a load they want because tickets will be marked with how much gravel they will be receiving.
Each ratepayer is able to have 400 tones of gravel per year.
Armstrong understands that some ratepayers will be unhappy having to pre-pay, but that bad debts have forced them to do this.
“Now it’s not going to be that easy to run over and get it. They have to pre-pay for it and get a ticket,” he said.