Fort McMurray Minute: Issue 131

Fort McMurray Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Fort McMurray politics

📅 This Week In Fort McMurray: 📅

• Council will meet tomorrow at 5:00 pm, and one of the items on the agenda is a proposal to bring back a dedicated Specialized Transit service. On June 23rd, Council directed Administration to bring forward options to reinstate the former SMART Bus model, and Administration is now proposing to separate Specialized Transit from Transit On Demand, with dedicated vehicles and shifts for each. Administration claims the change would cut the pickup window from 30 minutes to about 5 minutes and raise on-time performance from 87% to at least 98%. Running the services separately with the current fleet would reduce Transit On Demand capacity by 15% to 25%, or roughly 41 to 68 trips a day, so Administration is asking for $800,000 to buy four new buses, plus up to $86,000 from 2026 savings for interim leasing and staff recruitment. Keeping on-demand service at current levels would also require $1.076 million a year in additional operating funding and seven new full-time positions from 2027, raising the annual transit operating budget from $19.218 million to about $20.294 million. Those ongoing costs would come to Council during the 2027 budget deliberations, with the new service targeted to begin in December.
  
  
• Also at tomorrow's 5:00 pm meeting, Council will give first reading to changes to the Roads and Transportation Bylaw that would raise the fine for parking after "No Parking" or "Street Maintenance" signs have been posted from $120 to $400. A new $400 fine would also apply to parking in a Winter Maintenance Zone. Administration wants to replace impound towing during snow clearing with tow-around-the-corner towing, which moves a vehicle to a nearby legal spot and is expected to take 30 to 60 minutes rather than up to 2 hours. It estimates the new approach would cost about $1.2 million a year, enough for roughly 13,333 tows at $90 each, and claims the higher fine is set to make the program cost neutral, even though tickets paid within seven days are reduced to $240. The amendments would also create a $500 fine for parents or guardians who allow a youth to operate a miniature vehicle in a public place, including on pathways. The municipality's dangerous goods routes, which have not been updated since 2002, would be redrawn as well, although those changes need provincial ministerial approval before taking effect.
  
  
• When Council meets tomorrow at 5:00 pm, it will be asked to endorse a plan for the municipality to operate the Fort McMurray Heritage Village and Heritage Shipyard directly. Council agreed on April 28th to take ownership of both sites from the Fort McMurray Heritage Society, which expects to finish dissolving in October. Under the plan, Heritage Village would reopen seasonally in 2027 with tours, school programs, and facility rentals, while the Shipyard, which was dismantled and moved over the summer to make way for flood mitigation work, would reopen in 2028. The gross projected cost of running the sites is $1,082,050 a year, against projected revenue of $40,000 from rentals, admissions, and gifts in kind. That falls well below the 30% average cost recovery Administration found among other Alberta municipalities that took over museums from non-profits. The plan would also create a new Culture & Heritage branch with a manager and two supervisors by 2028. The operating budget request is set to come to Council in December as part of the 2027 budget.
  
  
• Council will also give first reading at tomorrow's 5:00 pm meeting to amendments to the Community Standards Bylaw that follow a May 26th notice of motion from Mayor Sandy Bowman calling for tighter enforcement against unsightly properties. The changes would add deteriorating pavement, curbs, sidewalks, and potholes, including on private parking lots, to the conditions bylaw officers can explicitly act against. They would also double the fine for scavenging from or improperly leaving goods at charity collection sites from $250 to $500, and require shopping cart owners to put a phone number on their carts. Alongside the bylaw, Administration is presenting an enforcement plan that would shift Bylaw Services from mainly responding to complaints toward proactive inspections of commercial districts, major corridors, and neighbourhoods, beginning in March 2027. Where an owner fails to comply with an order and does not appeal, the municipality would send in a contractor to do the work and add the cost to the owner's property tax roll. Bylaw Services logged 1,356 nuisance-related incidents from January 1st to August 12th, nearly half of them for nuisances on private property.
  
  
• Fort McMurray Catholic Schools is planning an expansion of Holy Trinity Catholic High School to keep pace with a growing student population. The addition will include a full fieldhouse and gymnasium along with three new classrooms. The division says the fieldhouse will provide dedicated space for physical education, sports, school events, and other activities. Four modular classrooms are also scheduled to be installed in late 2026 and early 2027 to help the school manage near-term enrollment pressures. The announcement did not include a cost or a construction timeline for the permanent addition. The division says it will continue advocating for the facilities, space, and resources needed as the community grows.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

Follow us on social media for updates between issues on municipal decisions, wasteful spending, tax changes, and other local issues.

It's the easiest way to keep up with what's going on and share the latest news with friends and neighbours.

🪙 This Week’s Sponsor: 🪙

This week's sponsor is you! We don't have big corporate backers, so if you like what you're reading, please consider making a donation or signing up as a monthly member.

Having said that, if you are a local business and are interested in being a sponsor, send us an email and we'll talk!