Community spirit helped good outweigh the bad for Whitecourt in 2020

Whitecourt, AB, Canada / XM 105

Dec 31, 2020

Erika Chorostil

2020 has been a challenging year for many.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit everyone hard, and the Town of Whitecourt has also felt its negative effects.

However, Mayor Maryann Chichak says the town had a good response in terms of dealing with the crisis, and the good still outweighed the bad this year.

“From a COVID perspective, we have been really good at adapting to each of the situations that have presented themselves over the course of the year,” says Chichak. “Thanking Whitecourt for really pulling together and showing incredible compassion and kindness towards family and friends and neighbours and trying to keep each of us healthy as we go through the COVID pandemic.”

Chichak adds that she thinks kindness is really important in helping to keep the numbers down in the community, which “has probably been one of the biggest challenges in 2020.”

Whitecourt town council made it a priority to make sure the community could recover from the pandemic, especially given where the economy was at the start of the year.

“We looked at it from a perspective as to how could we make plans to recover from the situation that we’re in,” says Chichak. “There’s a recession and a pandemic so some of the economic studies that were initiated in 2020 are things like our business park feasibility study, the COVID-19 Impact Assessment to come up with a recovery strategy, the targeted industrial growth, diversification development, and attraction pilot project that’s been started, along with the geothermal development feasibility study.”

Chichak says these studies will provide the town with information on how to move forward and provide business support and attract investment into the community.

Despite having to navigate around the pandemic and the impacts it brought to the community and economy, Chichak notes that Whitecourt also had accomplishments this year.

“We’ve also had good things and good accomplishments in 2020 in our community, whether it be grants that have been handed out to very needy organizations, systems that we have put in place like our GIS system, different economic developments that have been initiated, along with some of the great work we’ve done through our infrastructure department.”

The Mayor says a particular highlight that stood out to her was the grant funding to non-profits to help enhance the quality of life for residents during the pandemic. Grants were issued through Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) programming, the Town of Whitecourt, and operational support grants went to organizations including the library, Eastlink Park, and the Mountain Bike Association.

In 2021, Chichak says they are looking forward to having some of their studies wrap up so policies can be put into place and the economic development team can work with local businesses and outside investors. The town is also continuing the voluntary arbitration process with Woodlands County to work out a new cost-share agreement as part of the inter-municipal collaboration framework and to re-build the positive relationship they shared in the past.

Mayor Chichak adds the final things she is proud of is council’s continued efforts to communicate and engage with its residents, and residents themselves coming together during the pandemic to engage with one another through community initiatives, even at a distance.

“We continued to engage members of our community through challenges, online workouts, new vegetation programs, and I think that’s huge for a community of our size,” Chichak praised. “We were able to create new initiatives for our community to participate in, and they were things like the twinkle tours we did recently, our Christmas lights competition, and those types of initiatives really help keep a community positive and engaged and I’m really proud of what we’ve done.”

-Erika Chorostil.