It has been a busy couple of months in the Village of Warfield.
We had our long serving Chief Administrative Officer Vince Morelli retire and we have hired Jackie Patridge into the Village as the Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Officer. Jackie is a resident of the Village of Warfield and is a CGA. Jackie has been a welcome addition to our tight knit team.
As a council we have several goals for 2015 that we are working towards and some we have achieved.
One of the most significant of them was to secure a long term deal for library and recreation; we were pleased to announce a long term partnership with the City of Trail recently. During the elections, one thing we continuously heard from our residents was that they wanted a recreation agreement with the City of Trail.
When negotiating, both teams thought it would be in the best interest of both communities to have in place a long term agreement to get both municipalities through this election term and into the next council’s term.
This allows much more security for both communities and residents are able to participate in recreation both in Warfield and in Trail.
In the next few weeks, Warfield council will be working with a consultant to develop our five-year strategic plan as well as working on the framework for our asset management plan.
As with the recreation agreement, as a council, we want to not only be looking at our current situations in the village but develop a plan for the future, both for the current council and future.
We would like future councils to be able to understand the direction we are heading and have the decisions we are making now fit the framework for those future goals.
This is also a great opportunity to gain knowledge from individual councilors and the goals they have in mind, but also to develop that team atmosphere between our office staff and our works crew.
We are a small municipality and as a team, we function so much better when we are all on the same page and have a common direction.
Warfield days was a huge success this past weekend, and after a bit of a hiatus, the kids all wheel parade was back with roughly 30 participants. We had a pancake breakfast put on by Kootenay Savings, games in the park for the kids, music entertainment in the park, a steak dinner and the Warfield pool was opened for the annual free swim.
Thank you to all of our volunteers who helped make Warfield Community Day a success! We are also happy to say that the pool is now open for the summer season!
There are some exciting things happening in the Village this summer. The Village is working with DIG 2 Ride and WAVES (Warfield Village Enhancement Society) in the creation of Phase 1 of a bike pump track in Beaver Bend park. We are excited to have received a grant from the Kootenay Savings Foundation to go towards this project and are awaiting the word on a few
other grant applications we have put out there. We also have our Youth
Leadership Program starting up as well after receiving a grant from Columbia Basin Trust and are looking at other potential grants for seniors programming and recreation.
Ted Pahl is the Mayor of Warfield
Community Comment is an opportunity for elected officials from our local municipalities to update citizens in the region on the events, plans and progress in their respective communities. Every Friday, the Trail Times will present, on a rotating basis, a submission from councils, school trustees or regional district directors.