By Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter with files from Dori Modney - @Dori_Modney

Municipal Affairs minister helps celebrate formation of municipal enforcement unit

Aug 25, 2017 | 1:40 PM

COALDALE – Eight months after the Coaldale and District Municipal Enforcement (CDME) unit was launched, Alberta’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, Shaye Anderson, helped celebrate its formation in Coaldale.

The CDME – funded through a regional collaboration grant of nearly $227,000 from the Alberta Community Partnership program – provides education, bylaw enforcement and traffic services in Coaldale, Barons, Coalhurst and Picture Butte.

“When communities work together on things like this – like policing and with the peace officers – it benefits everybody,” stated Anderson, while meeting with officials from the included communities. “One of the things that these Alberta Community Partnership grants is about, is getting together and working together on these things.

“Seeing a project like this, where it starts in Coaldale and fans out to these smaller communities, it’s important,” he continued. “It’s important for the communities to feel safe and for these officers to connect with the people out there, and I think it’s been a really good thing so far, and I can only see positives going forward.”

The unit was formed in January of 2017, and as peace officer David Sawatzky explains, they’ve been well received by the communities they monitor.

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“It’s pretty good, people know why we’re here, people see it as a positive for their community,” Sawatzky explained. “We’re trying to help keep the communities looking clean, looking nice and neat, making them a place that people want to move to, and that just helps with property values going up. Down the road, if you’re wanting to move and sell your home, it’s going to be worth a little bit more if the community’s looking good, because the community is a nice community to live in.”

As for what they see the most of, Sawatzky says they frequently have to deal with unsightly properties, where there’s garbage left lying around or the grass isn’t cut often enough. He noted that they’re also involved in animal control.

Another crucial part of their job however, as stated by peace officer Dustin Burns, is centred around traffic control.

“We try and keep the school zone speeds down. We get a lot of complaints about the school zones and people speeding through there, so we try to keep a visual presence out there,” said Burns. “[Another] big thing is making those full stops at stop signs. Might not seem like it, but all it takes is half-a-second, and there’s a vehicle and another vehicle and someone’s injured.”

It was also noted that because the peace officers are provincially appointed, they can deal with highway infractions as well, should they witness them.

by Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter with files from Dori Modney - @Dori_Modney

Municipal Affairs minister helps celebrate formation of municipal enforcement unit

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