October 21, 2025

The City of Camrose Council has recently stated that they have three areas of concern regarding the administration utility accounts:

a) Staff Safety, b) delinquency, and c) cost of dealing with b).

Some people are being rude and displaying inappropriate behaviour, which is totally unacceptable. However, the actual facts  to support a) and b) have not been made public.

To resolve the above, City council passed a motion to take all business and residential utility accounts and put them in the name of your landlord.

Basically, the City is blaming everyone who is a Tenant/Renter for this bad behaviour by treating everyone unfairly. You lose the independence of having your utility account in your name. You aren’t responsible anymore – your City of Camrose utility account has to be in the name of your landlord. How do you feel about not having the confidence or trust from City Hall to have a utility account in your own name?

Is the City council implying that all utility account delinquency and poor behaviour comes from Tenants/Renters only? Haven’t business and homeowners run into tough times periodically and gotten behind?

The transfer of utility accounts to landlords is simply because the City doesn’t have the procedures/policies or the personnel to carry them out. For once and for all, deal with this issue –City Hall can shut water off if it exceeds the deposit, City employees can hang up the phone if someone is rude, City employees can call the Police, or senior City employees can step up to help out at the counter if the situation warrants.

All people who object to being treated and grouped  with troublemakers should demand from City Council to pass a new motion to reinstate utility accounts for those who qualify.

Granted, the City has said account transfers will be done over time, they shouldn’t be done at all. To treat Tenants/Renters as second class citizens isn’t acceptable and is simply lazy irresponsible governance.

Perhaps greater savings could be achieved by eliminating the positions of those responsible for not having the ability and or the motivation to hold the wrong doers accountable rather than the entire Tenant/Renter population.

City Council, do the right thing – pass a new motion reinstating utility accounts and deal with your internal issue of periodic resurrection of this issue and the lack of will or ability to enforce your policy/procedure regarding the administration of utility accounts.

Mickey Mohan,
Camrose

October 14

Time to replace the Mayor and Council of City of Camrose with some better choices.

I attended Council meetings both in person and some online in the past four years. I have served on Committees of Camrose Council including Assessment Review Board, (Local and Composite), Camrose Transit Advisory, Subdivision and Development Appeal, and Council Remuneration Committee. I have a strong interest in the operation of municipalities having served as auditor, accounting advisor, and consultant to Alberta municipalities for over 30 years.

This Mayor and Council chose to not record their votes on council motions and thus the Council minutes available for the taxpayer do not have this information. I made a “promise” earlier this year, in a previous letter to The Booster, to bring this decision up during Council elections. The Councillors who supported to record voting were councillors Broker, Francoeur, and Rosland, and they deserve your vote as they represent you the taxpayer. Councillors Banack, Hoveland, Murphy voted against accountability and most definitely do not deserve your vote, as they are “hiding” all their votes. Mayor Stasko voted against the motion, and he should not have your vote.

When confronted by taxpayers, the Mayor and Council explain that it was “Council” that made the decision. With no written record of the voting, the Mayor and Councillors avoid their responsibility to explain their position to the electors. In this manner, the “administration” largely controls the discussion even before the council meeting.

Secondly, and most importantly, when you are voting, please do not be trapped into voting for the mayor and all the eight members of council and thus voting on names you only vote for based on name recognition. In my view, some members of this council are not deserving of your continuing votes (they are fine and decent people, but not suited for the roles of Council) and any new persons running could be an improvement. Please only vote for persons you know you support.

This Mayor and Council, in my opinion, have a “low” understanding of the finances and readily were maneuvered into excessive user fees, utility rates and taxes. We need better representation.

Make your votes count.

David W. Kotyk,
Camrose

October 14

On October 7, my wife and I went to the City Candidates Meet and Greet.   This is so important that we as residents of Camrose make sure that we vote in the right people for our City. I was able to have conversations with the previous and new City council members and, because of this meet and greet, which was held at the Library, I was able to have my list of whom I plan to vote for.

On October 20, please make sure to get out either to the Field House or the Mirror Lake Centre to make your vote count on who you want to see on City council and who you want as our mayor. This does affect everyone here in this City. Please take the time to vote.

Lorne Vanderwoude,
Camrose

October 14

After reading The Camrose Booster of September 30, I was disheartened to read that the City of Camrose is again resurrecting the issue of utility accounts and mistreatment of their staff. In this article, management has also tossed revenue into the mix.
Tenants/renters? Landlords? This is what the City is doing. The City is going to transfer your account for utilities into your landlord’s name. Why? Because the City has identified inappropriate behaviour towards staff that staff, at times, have found threatening and unsafe. So the City’s response is to lump all tenants/renters in the same group and label them as ones who are responsible for inappropriate behaviour.
It doesn’t matter how long you have had utilities in your name, you are one of those “tenant/renters” and are being grouped in with the troublemakers.  Tenants/renters are not second class citizens and should not be treated as such by lumping them into a group that has very negative connotations.
This same topic has come up in prior years and it is quite clear that City Hall doesn’t have an effective policy or people in place to ensure the staff are treated respectfully and to deal with those who display inappropriate behaviour.
The councillors who voted for this amendment have enacted unjustly and unfairly to the citizens who pay their utilities promptly and with respect.
This new policy applies to business as well as residential, so you are no longer good enough or responsible enough to have utilities in your name. Doesn’t matter how much pride you take in paying on time or for how long–you are now under the wing of your landlord, unless of course you own your own home–you can have utilities, however, if that same homeowner rented space for their business the landlord would have utilities in their name.
In summation, mayor and council, the citizens expect leadership, downloading the problems of some by carving out a segment of the population and labelling them the same as troublemakers is irresponsible.
The way to convey to the City that you are responsible for yourself is to make your voices heard to the mayor, councillors and City management. The City staff who have endured inappropriate behaviour have been failed miserably by everyone involved which is why we are still discussing this topic. Enough, fix it once and for all. Take responsibility.
Hold those who cause the trouble accountable. Put staff in place who are capable of enforcing policy/procedures to protect staff.

Mickey Mohan,
Camrose

October 7

A teachers’ strike seems inevitable now because of the skewed priorities, the financial incompetence and lack of integrity of our current government.

The government will pay parents $150 per student per week, and hundreds of thousands on ad campaigns instead of negotiating in good faith with the people tasked to educate our children. They fully fund students in charter schools, even though they can charge significant fees and decide which students can attend (eliminating special needs kids), something no other province does, and they don’t have money to properly fund public education? ALL Alberta children deserve a good education.

The government wasted millions of dollars on an unusable Tylenol substitute (much of it never delivered), questionable private healthcare contracts and set up a costly, top-heavy bureaucratic structure and they can’t pay for Covid vaccines? They spend millions of dollars in legal fees to fight a lawsuit alleging fraud by government insiders instead of calling a public inquiry to find out if there is substance to this challenge.
Our Premier spent millions on travel to the USA to attend the inauguration of a president who is trying to annex Canada, attending right-wing policy think tanks and her Ministers met with American politicians that have no sway in trade policy and came away with no deliverables. Then they claw back federal disability benefits and increase rents for AISH recipients.

They spent millions on an “Alberta is Calling” advertising campaign in 2022. In March of 2024, Premier Smith argued with the Federal government for a higher allotment of immigrants to help grow Alberta’s economy, yet by October, she was fighting with them once again, complaining that immigrants were putting a strain on provincial resources and housing. They are now vilifying immigrants and threatening to cut services for them.

This government has spent millions touring the province with their agenda of promoting an Alberta Pension Plan (rejected in a 2023 provincial survey), a provincial Police Force, an Alberta Tax Agency and an Alberta Immigration Agency. They have passed a law to lower the threshold for provincial referendums. The Premier declares that she wants sovereignty within a united Canada yet spends taxpayer dollars on legal fees for the separatist APP challenging Elections Alberta’s decision to have the court adjudicate the constitutionality of their referendum question. All of this sounds a lot like supporting Alberta Separation.

Delphine Doerksen,
Camrose

October 7 

The Camrose Bike Bus has been running for the last school years and it has been amazing seeing kids get excited about riding their bikes to school with friends and classmates. For those unaware of the Bike Bus, it starts at one family’s house and then rides past other kids’ houses, picking up other riders along the way to St. Pat’s. There are adults leading, often some fun music and the “vibes are immaculate.” However, the number of Camrosians in vehicles who have shown impatience or general disdain towards the riders is unbelievable.

Bikes are an incredible tool and relatively inexpensive form of accessible transportation. The Bike Bus provides a fun and engaging way to empower kids to get out and exercise while getting themselves to school. We hear too much about how “kids these days” can’t, won’t or don’t do any number of things, yet when provided an option of transportation that has been available for generations, we honk at these kids and wave them to hurry up. Drivers are able to sit in climate controlled bubbles with music and a morning coffee yet are unable to appreciate kids having safe, fun transportation because they cost us two minutes on a commute.

So the next time you’re angry at kids having fun getting to school, take a deep breath, maybe sip that coffee and offer a friendly smile and wave. Next time you too could ride your bike to work and have as much fun as they are. The kids are all right.

Cole Boyd,
Camrose

October 7 

I do wonder if all those 55,000 workers of Canada Post who voted for the Liberals to save their jobs from being axed are regretting voting for this government.

The Liberals have decided to end door-to-door delivery which will take a decade to put into action.   This caused the union to have their 55,000 workers go on a complete national walkout. I personally do not send letters, but instead write emails. I do not get my government cheques by mail and most bills for are paid online.

I do understand that there has to have something done to stop the financial losses which this Crown corporation has suffered. There has to be a better way to do this – restructuring?

The way the Liberals are going is causing a lot of people to lose their jobs.   Our unemployment numbers are going to climb by thousands of claims. This will be very expensive so I do wonder how the tax payers are going to afford to pay for the thousands of dollars per month in claims. This is just something for all of you to think about.

Lorne Vanderwoude,
Camrose