Physician Recruitment Committee
A recommendation was made that the District of Clearwater (DOC) administration work with staff of the Interior Health Authority (IHA) to bring back the Physician Recruitment Committee, and that council give consideration to increasing the DOC’s recruitment budget to $15,000 for 2020.
“We have a good complement of doctors, but we don’t want to suddenly stop paying attention to that,” said Leslie Groulx, chief administrative officer for the DOC.
“There was a really robust recruitment committee with IHA and the DOC, and it was working really well, so we’d like to resurrect that.”
Professional recruitment
There was a suggestion that funds left over in the 2019 Professional Recruitment budget be allocated to an operational reserve fund for Professional Recruitment in the 2020 budget year.
Council would like to expand that to include employees at the DOC, such as management level professionals, as well as others like school teachers.
“We’d play a role in giving them a warm welcoming, or if they’re coming (to town) to be interviewed, what we’ve done in the past, is put on a barbecue and invite people who were like-minded to what they’re interests are,” said Groulx.
“We’d like to get back to doing things like that, and the other side of that is the retention of professionals. So once the community has recruited people, not specifically council, but the community, in whatever profession, then we need to make sure they’re fitting into the community and feeling comfortable.”
The district hasn’t done much of this kind of work in the past, aside from physician recruitment and retention, so more effort is being talked about for professionals in other fields.
Trail from Wells Gray intersection to roundabout
The Trails Task Force Committee is looking for approval from the Wells Gray Community Forest Commission regarding a grant request for $30,000. The money will go toward the planning and design of a multi-use pathway between the Wells Gray Inn intersection and the Highway 5 roundabout.
“This is part of our trails master plan. Our next step is to connect the Wells Gray intersection to the Buy-Low area,” said Groulx.
“We want to bring that up to proper multi-use pathway standard.”
The design will begin in the spring and once the design work is done, the DOC plans to apply for additional grants to get the trail built.
Road rescue looking for grants to update tools
It was recommended that Wells Gray Community Forest Commission approve a grant request for matching funds from the Clearwater and district Road Rescue Society in the amount of $26,000 to buy a Jaws of Life unit, a power plant, spreader, cutter and power ram unit.
Road rescue’s current above-mentioned tools are outdated and need to be brought up to the present models.
Ticketing
Council formally adopted the District of Clearwater Municipal Ticket Information Bylaw and the corresponding bylaws that required amendments to fines.
“We’ve adopted all these bylaws specific to municipal ticketing. We adopted a municipal ticketing bylaw, so that means now when our bylaw officer goes out, or the RCMP can have tickets as well, so if there’s a noise infraction they can write a ticket if they want,” said Groulx.
“The intent now isn’t just to go out and start writing tickets all over town, but it is an enforcement tool.”
Previously, the bylaws would have a ticket in it, but it was difficult and implement and enforce that fine without a ticketing system. So now if you get a ticket, you’d have 14 days to pay and it would go to courts if you don’t pay.
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