By Abby Zieverink

ICF agreement

County Reeve says formalizing the ICF agreement was a lot of work on both sides

Feb 9, 2022 | 1:39 PM

County of Grande Prairie Reeve Leanne Beaupre says the county is happy to have finalized an agreement on the Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework with the City of Grande Prairie.

“There’s a lot of thanks and kudos to go to our administration and city administration but also previous committee members and council members of both the City and County of Grande Prairie have really worked hard to make sure we got the best agreement for both municipalities.”

In 2017 the province brought in legislation requiring municipalities to have agreements on shared services. The announcement on the ICF agreement came from both municipalities on Monday, after several years of talks.

Beaupre says for many years, the county and city have collaborated to find efficiencies and cost savings. The change in the Municipal Government Act formalized a lot of those collaborations.

“Many times throughout our discussions with this council and previous council we have been very close to a solution. There had just been a few stumbling blocks that we had to understand and then move forward.”

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She explains one of the items in the agreement which needed to be ironed out was the Revenue Sharing Agreement, which ended up being the only item in the agreement going to arbitration.

“The city was working from a different perspective on what the revenue sharing agreement was for and the county was working from a different (perspective) as well,” she said.

“So having the arbitrator make a decision on what the purpose of that revenue sharing agreement really defined where we moved forward to come to a final decision on our ICF around culture and recreation especially.”

Beaupre adds the rest of the ICF agreement was made between hard work and discussions between the city and county

“Other agreements that we had already agreed to in the past will also make up part of that overarching agreement.”

Part of the ICF includes the county contributing $1.5 million per year over four years, retroactive to last April, to support city services.

“Both municipalities, I believe, felt that this was a fair amount of money and it creates the contribution of the County of Grande Prairie to the city for the facilities that our ratepayers use,” explained Beaupre.

“We need to look at it being fair and equitable on how much those services cost and if we’re not providing it in our own municipality somebody else is and the County of Grande Prairie has established that we will pay our fair share and we will pay for our residents for the usage of facilities that we currently don’t provide for them (county ratepayers).”

Over the next four years, both councils have agreed to work on data sets for recreational facilities.

“There is a commitment from both councils and the administration to work together to come up with good data sets that support users in the area so that we have a better idea for who is using what and what facilities are being used by which municipality.”