The Township of Alberton is looking to make 2021 the year of broadband internet.
Mike Ford, reeve for Alberton Township, said that one of his goals in the new year, will be to continue to lobby the provincial government to ensure that smaller communities like Alberton aren’t passed over when it comes to funding for broadband internet services.
“We are actively engaged in broadband funding,” Ford said.
“In light of larger broadband announcements this week we’re fearful that, because of our size, we’re just going to be left to the side on it and we don’t want that to happen.”
Ford said the township has taken to lobbying various levels of government at different conferences and during municipal delegations in order to keep the pressure on in terms of funding, which he said have yielded positive results so far.
The most recent announcement from the province detailed $10.9-million in funding for broadband internet across northern Ontario, with $1-million for projects in First Nation communities in the district. Broadband internet projects were also a subject of discussion at the Rainy River District Municipal Association (RRDMA) AGM held on January 16. At that meeting Rainy River Future Development Corporation executive director Geoff Gillon said there will be big moves made in the next few years in order to get reliable broadband to the district, but Ford said he’s also considering another option: Starlink, the satellite internet service from the man behind Tesla and SpaceX.
“I sent an email to Elon Musk about three months ago asking to be put on the list,” he said.
“Something like that would be ideal for the municipality, it’s something that we could probably go on our own, so if we do get left out of other initiatives, Starlink may be an opportunity for us. This council is really good at thinking outside of the box.”
Speaking of his council and staff, Ford credits the size of his staff, CAO/clerk-treasurer Dawn Hayes and extensive annual emergency training for their ability to smoothly transition into a new way of living and doing business as the COVID-19 pandemic bore down on the region.
“Given the extensive emergency preparations we’ve done over the years, we fared quite well with the changes,” Ford explained.
“It was unbelievable how well prepared we were. We have an annual exercise and our emergency order kits that we need to pull out when we declare an emergency, they were all set and ready to go. We were able to make the transition to electronic meetings seamlessly.”
Ford said that because the office only has two people who work there at all times, the transition to working remotely wasn’t such a big deal. It gave Alberton a leg up during the pandemic because of the amount of work needed to move a large municipal staff to new routines and technologies that the small township largely avoided.
While the pandemic slowed down a lot of municipal work across the district in 2020, the year was also significant for a number of funding announcements that had direct impact on a few long-standing projects. Ford noted one big project that finally got the momentum it needed last year was the replacement of Kehl Bridge, an effort he says the township has been trying to get done for a long time.
Ford explained that the township has put plenty of money into the bridge in order to keep it open throughout the years, but it was only a bandaid on the aging bridge’s problems. At the same time the township was also trying to save enough money to complete the needed repairs, and a recent emergency pushed the repairs from ‘necessary’ to ‘urgent.’
“What really damaged the bridge was we had a derailment in Crozier about four years ago and heavy traffic was routed across that bridge,” he explained.
“It just shortened its lifespan by about 20 years. So we were in a bit of a jam and had to contribute more aggressively to the reserves.”
The township eventually saw significant funding from both the provincial and federal governments, which Ford said meant the work could be completed and didn’t require any additional tax revenue. The fact that funding came in for the bridge also means that the money that was going into reserves for the bridge replacement will instead be put towards other projects in the future.
Looking ahead into 2021, Ford said there are a number of different projects for the municipality that could start up, and a handful of others that are currently underway.
“Right now we’re just in the middle of a computer upgrade to a brand-new computer system, which was one of the deficiencies we noted in the COVID pandemic,” he said.
“Our computer system was archaic and we had to do a lot of patching up in order to deal with the pandemic. Using COVID funding released by the province we are able to perform that substantial computer upgrade.”
Ford said they’re also currently working on ensuring there is appropriate space to keep to physical distancing requirements at the township’s rink shacks.
