Banff’s mayor and councillors have been assigned their new committee positions.
They have been appointed to outside agency committees as well as council committees, including Municipal Planning Commission (MPC), Development Appeal Board (DAB) and Banff Housing Corporation (BHC).
“We worked very hard to balance the workload of all councillors. It’s our intention is to have an equal workload for all councillors,” said Mayor Karen Sorensen.
“We don’t necessarily consider just the number of committees, but we consider how they’re weighted based on a number of meetings, duration, or even how intense or controversial the topic is.”
On the Municipal Planning Commission, Councillors Corrie DiManno and Chip Olver join public members David Bayne, Steve Beaton, Jay Harris, Raymond Horyn and Patrick Roi. Anne-Marie Puccini is Parks Canada’s representative on the board.
Councillors Grant Canning and Brian Standish are on the Development Appeal Board. Public members are Yannis Karlos, Dak Kerr, Barbara McNeil, Brock Rishworth. Parks Canada reps are Mark Merchant and Sylvanna Heggmann.
Mayor Karen Sorensen and Canning have seats on the Banff Housing Corporation, joining public members Paul Baxter, Francis Hopkins, Ladd Snowsell, and Darryl Zimmer. Town manager Robert Earl is also on the board.
Council newcomer Ted Christensen has been named to the Banff Heritage Corporation. Public members are Anita Battrum, Rob Crosby, Patrick Cyr and Ralphine Locke. There are also federal and provincial reps on the board.
Coun. Stavros Karlos is the council representative on the Banff Public Library. He is also joined by Standish and Christensen on the Assessment Review Board.
Council appointments have also been made to several outside agencies.
With the new four-year term for municipal politicians, the appointments for the council committee and outside agency committees are for two years, with the intention to revisit at that point.
“We did go out of the way to shake all the committees up, but in a couple of instances we tried to also keep some consistency and experience,” said Sorensen. “My intention is after two years we’ll shake it up again.”
