Kara Westerlund, the newly elected president of Alberta Rural Municipalities, speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about her new role and the challenges facing RMA members.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: What led you to take on the role of president?

Kara Westerlund: I think the timing is perfect. I have been vice president for the last seven years and have worked with both Al Kemmere of Mountain View County (he was a former president) and Paul McLauchlin.

Paul was stepping back this fall and I thought the timing was right and the opportunity presented itself, so I put my name forward.

MH: Has there been a decline in RMA opposition to abandoning horsemen for the state police force?

Information: That’s not what we’re hearing from the countryside. We just came out of our congress, of course we spent four days with 69 rural municipalities. There’s been some chatter about that, but for the most part we’re going to respond strongly and quickly to our members’ requests, and they’re not dealing with the state police department.

MH: Police funding has certainly sparked controversy in Congress, including a resolution to inform taxpayers how much of their taxes pay the Alberta government for policing.

What caused this push for transparency?

Information: We have several municipalities that have cut property tax funding for the police.

I think it’s been five or six years since rural municipalities are starting to pay for policing, so we’ve been trying to educate our members and of course our residents about how much of their property taxes are spent on policing.

MH: So why would this be a problem in the first place? If policing is a significant cost, what’s stopping municipalities from being open with residents about how tax revenues are spent?

Information: This is something new for us. Frankly, we haven’t been paying for a few years and now we’re paying. When this was first introduced, it was a laddered approach to how much rural people would pay.

The other problem we face is that we were promised a large number of police officers and these numbers have not yet been realized. I believe we are just over half of the extra boats we were promised, and I know that brings some challenges.

When they talk directly to the RCMP, like any state or statewide police force across this country and across North America, they’re having trouble recruiting.

It’s very interesting because I was part of this process from the beginning, and when the promise was made, we said that if we started paying, we would see more boots on the ground.

The first question that came to my mind was: ‘How are you going to get to the soldiers’ and ‘How are you going to get them fast enough?’ And frankly, here we are, still waiting to see those results.

MH: Your predecessor, Paul McLauchlin, focused the fall convention on fiscal hurdles and sent the message that municipalities could be bankrupt in five to 10 years if things don’t change. What do you think about the temperature in the room and what do your member municipalities think about the way forward?

Information: It will definitely be a tough road. I always say, the analogy is this: That’s death by 1000 cuts.

So I’ve been on the council for 14 years, I’ve been on the RMA board for the last seven years, and I can’t pinpoint what the turning point will be.

This is a discussion we have around the board table. We take a deep dive into some municipal finances across this province, especially in rural areas, and we see this. We see that the struggle is real.

Besides the oil and gas tax outstanding, you are also dealing with mature asset strategy and the realization of the Asset Management Review.

Any cuts promised to oil and gas companies during COVID and the economic downturn were made at the expense of residents, especially those in rural Alberta.

The tax base of many rural municipalities is oil and gas, but oil and gas are also a major cause of many of our infrastructure problems.

MH: As the new president, how do you plan to approach dialogue with the Smith administration around all of these issues: affordability, fiscal health, the status of member municipalities, critical infrastructure financing?

Information: I think it’s going to start with sitting down at the table and having a frank conversation about the direction the state government is taking, where they’re going and where they see us fitting into that.

We’re dealing with rural municipalities that are facing bankruptcy, and that’s something we’ve never faced since I’ve been around and in generations.

There is forward-looking legislation and a process for cities to dissolve and become part of the rural municipality, but there is no forward-looking path for the dissolution of the countryside and what that would look like.