Extraordinary Accomplishments Keep Rolling In As Town Revels in Consecutive Successes

The successes keep coming for the Town of Ste. Anne as hurdles are jumped and projects are announced.

To tally them up, the small community recently rallied to secure the future of their arena, saw a new grocery store announced, penciled in a dog park, had the province award them a new tech school/daycare, were chosen as the backdrop for a provincial police funding announcement (some going to the community police force) and secured a second 74-seat daycare facility.

“It’s been very busy and we are extremely proud of all that the town has received in the past several months,” said Mayor Yvan St. Vincent who is in his first term leading council. “It’s been a lot of work from this council, previous councils but mostly our office staff.”

St. Vincent noted that recently he seems to have to speak to CAO Marc Darker daily “as they work to investigate, execute, deliver or respond to something we’ve asked them to do.”

Being this busy is not something the Mayor in going to complain about though.

“We have many irons in the fire and it’s important to us that we do all we can for our residents,” explained St. Vincent, “We speak daily about how we want to offer more to our residents while keeping the small town feel and the outstanding services we’ve always had.”

The Mayor attributes the successes to building partnerships.

“We’ve collaborated with the Provincial government every chance we’ve got and that’s been a strong partnership both ways as they recognize our strong growth,” he explained. He added that the Town is not the only source of soliciting partnerships.

“Our [police] department and Chief Robichaud are leaders in the municipal policing field and Chief Robichaud continues to explore ways of improving services to our residents,” he praised, confident that the provincial announcement was made in Ste. Anne due to the police department’s great work.

It’s not just a provincial partnership the Town is focused on.

“I won’t speak for the RM but I know the town has recognized that we can accomplish far more together and the reality is we ‘share’ many residents and they want us working together,” he mentioned. “We also know that the ‘regional’ approach is favoured by government so we are partnering when it makes sense for both sides to do so.”

“The reality is that we are both taking it very seriously to be responsible to our rate payers so we have to make sure when we do things together that it’s mutually beneficial to both parties and hopefully we keep finding more and more of that common ground,” he added.

The CAO explained that a mutual aid agreement between the Town and the RM of Ste. Anne was revamped a few years back changing it from a shared-equipment and cost agreement pre-2019 to a cost for service agreement, an approach according to Darker that is working better.

Darker also explained that the direction the Town is taking, working more with the rural municipality, is similar to successes throughout the province.

“With recreation many municipalities such as the City and RM of portage, RM and Town of Lac Du Bonnet, RM of Brokenhead and Town of being said, we now feel we can accomplish way more in collaboration with our strong CDC. We look forward to seeing what’s next now that the CDC board is strong and starting to us to do that was to open up all board positions and invite anyone interested, including those previously on the board, to put their names forward if interested.”

Beausejour [all] recognized the need, and costs of providing recreation opportunities to their residents, and have adopted these services as a regional approach,” he noted.

The result of this move was positive said the Mayor.

“This allowed us to get back on track and run things according to the library’s constitution and since then, things are running very smoothly and we’ve seen lots of residents accessing the library,” he said.

While the dog park location is still being worked on, the details on where the second daycare will be built, the final plans for the new tech school are still to come; St. Vincent realizes that with the freshness of these plans, details will follow on time.

And his council has no plans on slowing down.

“We are always open to ideas that will benefit our residents,” he said. “I’d say right now there is a focus on trying to create opportunities for small and medium sized businesses so that we can create employment opportunities for our residents.”

“These municipalities recognize they are stronger together, and we have tried to adopt that approach as well.”

He added that getting all on board with this can be challenging for some “old school” thinkers but the model works and “the province loves to provide funds to regional projects.”

Ste. Anne’s Community Development Corporation (CDC) was also given support by council after sitting idle for a few years.

“Many of these things were in motion before the CDC started operating again,” said St. Vincent, referring to the string of announcements. “That get more and more active.”

Moving forward with all these accomplishments, including completing a multimillion dollar lagoon, even some of the peripheral services were fine tuned.

The Ste. Anne Library was a recent focus by the Town when the board was dissolved and the available board positions were posted.

“We didn’t overhaul anything, we just ensured, thanks to Councillor Wiens as the leader with the help of Councillor Einarson, that the library was operating according to its constitution,” explained St. Vincent. “The best way for

Getting too big too quickly can have its pitfalls, but St. Vincent is confident his council is in control of the big picture.

“We are conscious of our rapid growth over the past 10 years but we are also methodical in how that growth is handled so we can ensure we are able to keep up with all the services we offer,” he explained. “Not just in Rec, but we’ve seen a large increase in volunteerism, and that is very encouraging for all involved. It’s a clear message to him.

“It’s telling us our residents are proud of our Town and want to be part of all the great things we have going on and it’s very exciting,” he noted.