STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.
Photo credit: Curtis Galbraith
City Hall

City council highlights for February 26

Feb 27, 2024 | 6:00 AM

Highlights from the February 26 meeting of Grande Prairie City Council included the following:

Sunrise House

Council heard a presentation from Sunrise House Youth Emergency Shelter Executive Director Tanya Wald, who told council the shelter had been moved into its new location as of December 22.

Wald says the move came just in time as the shelter had the busiest Christmas she had ever seen.

Sunrise House currently has 12-15 of its 24 shelter beds occupied, along with five of its 11 housing units.

We will have more with Wald on future editions on EverythingGP.

Transit Use Increase

During an outline of highlights from the February 20 Operational Services committee meeting, Councillor Chris Thiessen talked about some huge increases in transit use last year.

That included:

  • 81 per cent increase in youth transit use
  • increase of 200 per cent for para transit
  • on-demand was up 241 per cent
  • conventional transit use went up 34 per cent

Dividend Payouts

Council approved having Mayor Jackie Clayton sign a unanimous consent on the shareholder dividends to be paid out by Aquatera.

The city’s share would be $4,001,275 when the mandatory and discretionary dividends are added together.

The County of Grande Prairie would receive $1,057,112, the Town of Sexsmith $455,560, and the Town of Wembley $39,098.

Discretionary share payouts have to be agreed to by all four of these municipalities as they are all shareholders in Aquatera.

Land Use Bylaw Changes

Council approved a change to the Land Use Bylaw to include 50 properties on the city’s east side.

These would be moved from the County of Grande Prairie’s zoning to similar zoning in the city’s bylaw.