Town council is embarking on an aggressive lobbying effort to get the police college built in Fort Macleod.
Council has prepared a marketing brochure it will send to Premier Ed Stelmach and all Alberta MLAs.
Mayor Shawn Patience is also calling on Fort Macleod residents to flood the Alberta Legislature with letters in support of the project.
“We want everyone to send letters,” Patience said. “If there are four members in the family we’d like all four to send letters.”
“The more the better.”
The province announced in August 2006 it would build the Alberta Police and Peace Officer Training Centre in Fort Macleod to train 1,400 recruits each year.
Since then the project has stalled because the province has not attracted a partner for a public-private P3 partnership to build the college.
Council created a brochure outlining the project’s history to ensure every MLA has a full understanding of the project.
“We are asking for MLAs to support a funding formula to move this project forward and to fulfill the commitment made to our community and region in 2006 by the government of Alberta,” Patience explained.
The brochure contains a time line for the project dating back to 1999 when the need for such a training centre was identified in the Alberta Justice Summit.
The time line details each development in the project’s history, concluding with the visit paid by Fort Macleod council and mayors, reeves and other officials from southern Alberta to Edmonton in November. Council sent a copy of the brochure to Stelmach in advance of the copies going to the MLAs.
“Even though construction was slated to begin in early 2007, we have remained patient, however our community and our entire region are becoming increasingly frustrated that no progress has been made in almost four years,” Patience wrote in a letter to Stelmach. “We would like to remind you, and your colleagues in government, of just how important this project is, to the citizens of Alberta, to enforcement officers, and to this entire region.”
In his letter to Stelmach, Patience stressed the importance of the police college project to Fort Macleod and the region.
“The elation, joy and relief felt by thousands of our citizens when we were awarded the training centre in 2006 has since been replaced with serious skepticism for a government that many now are beginning to see as failing to make good on its commitment,” Patience wrote. “The victory in 2006 gave this community and region hope. A community that has seen little to no population growth in almost 40 years began to look to the future, with a reason to believe, with a reason to dream, and it brought an entire region together, because our victory was their victory.” “The training centre may seem small in the scale of the entire province, but we assure you, in Fort Macleod, and in South Western Alberta, there is no bigger issue.”
A similar copy of the brochure is being mailed this week to residents of Fort Macleod, with a call to join a letter-writing campaign in support of the police college.
“We would hope teachers would make it a class project, and clubs and groups are urged to send letters,” Patience said.