With a new council, a new chief administrative officer and a new year ahead of them, the RM of Armstrong is on track to meeting ratepayers’ needs and council is planning to prepare its first budget.
The new council is just over four months old and has undertaken a number of initiatives to get the RM’s “house in order” and restore stability to the municipality after last year’s council resignations.
Reeve Garry Wasylowski said “nothing was ready to go” last August when he and five new council members – including some who had previously served on council – were sworn in after a byelection for every council seat. Their first order of business was to hire a new CAO to manage the overall operations of the RM. Then they had to quickly restore public works services such as road maintenance.
“It was a matter of getting our municipality operating again because from April until July, nothing happened. It was a critical time. We had to get graders back on the road, get the roads gravelled and get public works back in operation because winter was coming and it didn’t care if Armstrong was ready or not,” said Wasylowski. “I consider it a success that we moved forward and got a lot of these things done.”
The municipality underwent some upheaval last year when four councillors (Pat Stein, Ted Sumka, Paul Humeny and Brent Dziadek) resigned during council’s regular meeting on April 9. The resignations came almost half way through their four-year term of service. The reeve at the time, Kate Basford, and councillor Allen Pfrimmer did not resign, but they were unable to exercise council duties because of a loss of quorum. The provincial department of municipal and northern relations stepped in and appointed an administrator to oversee Armstrong’s day-to-day operation, and there were no council meetings between April 23 to July 23 inclusive.
Councillor Paul Humeny, Guy Rohne, Allen Evanchyshin, Glenn Barkman, David Tyndale and Garry Wasylowski were acclaimed / elected after a byelection was held on July 31, and council meetings resumed on Aug. 13. The present council will serve until October 2026.
Council hired Colleen Mayer as the RM’s new chief administrative officer in October. She’s come to the municipality with lots of previous governing experience. She formerly served as MLA for the riding of St. Vital (2016 to 2019) under the government of then premier Brian Pallister. She served on treasury board and handled a number of ministerial portfolios.
Wasylowski said creating a strong administration is important and hiring a new CAO was a priority for them.
“One of our biggest achievements was getting a CAO and getting everything going in the right direction” he said. “That might not sound like a major accomplishment, but a CAO is the backbone of what makes a municipality work.”
Another success council has seen is that everyone is working well together as a team.
“I want to thank the people of the RM of Armstrong for the council they elected. I think we’ve got a great group. We’re working together well,” said the reeve.
When the new council took over, Wasylowski said they weren’t “delivering our own budget” as they had to work with what the province and its administrator had put in place after the resignations. Having caught up with things that required council’s immediate attention, they’re ready to start talking about the budget and put a plan together.
“Basically, for two years our books were not done and our finances were not in order,” said Wasylowski. “It sounds simple but we’re just starting to get on track to getting our finances back in order. The 2022 audit has not been done but we’re working on that, and 2023 has not been done but we’re hoping by the end of 2024 we’ll have the financial statements ready so that we can move in to 2025 with proper bookkeeping and proper financial statements. The biggest challenge right now is to get our house in order and I think we’re getting really close to that.”
He said he hasn’t yet discussed timelines with council, but thinks they could present a budget in the spring and have a meeting to discuss the feedback they got from ratepayers during the byelection and what the priorities are going forward.
“We’re going to get on track with presenting budgets at the proper time and giving ratepayers an opportunity for feedback if there’s something in the budget they don’t like and want to change,” said the reeve.
As a municipality, Armstrong has a number of strengths including its agricultural industry with “some of the best cattle country anywhere,” said Wasylowski. And council will be looking at ways to enhance the sector.
“We have to make sure we enhance and work with the agricultural sector and make sure the roads are good and people are able to move around,” he said. “But we also have tourist attractions such as the Narcisse Snake Dens and the large monuments in Inwood (snakes), Meleb (mushrooms) and Komarno (mosquito) that people love to see. One strength many people don’t even think about is we’ve got an RTAC highway (Highway 7, which allows maximum trucking weight) for the movement of goods.”
The RM will be working with the [Crystal Spring] Hutterite Colony to “make sure the voices of the residents are heard” [regarding environmental protection], he said.
“The economic development the colony will bring to our region will be a big plus for the RM of Armstrong,” he said. “We’re working with the colony, municipalities around us and the [East Interlake] watershed district to see what the best options are to deal with [protecting the environment]. It’s going to be good for the area. We just have to make sure everybody’s working in the same direction and the information is out there so that everyone knows what’s going on.”
The first council meeting of 2025 is scheduled for Jan. 28, according the RM’s website.
