Redcliff council receives library report; defeated electronic voting

By Justin Seward
Redcliff Library looking for more readers
Redcliff town council listened in on the Redcliff Library’s update, defeated the electronic voting machine and continued to show their support for the Citizen on Patrol Society (COPS) at the May 8 meeting.
Library board representative Catherine Richardson gave council an update on what the library’s focus has been to improve literacy for the community members coming through the doors. She touched on the user survey from  eight of their planned services that were recently completed.
“As always we get very good ratings,” said Richardson.
“People really like us and that’s gratifying to hear that.”
What interested her was that there were 89 respondents within 10 days and the people who have an interest in the library gave their input right away.
The library is working with other groups through one-one-one questions about things that can be done to improve the facility.
“The big response there was the request for mobile charging stations,” said Richardson. “Not surprisingly, when I look at the demographics, that was linked to the younger user population. We’re going to go ahead with that. That’s going to be a quite an  in expensive thing and something people really like.”
She added other initiatives were considered but did not work out with the low survey results. Another survey asked if citizens would extend the library hours after 8 p.m. and what peaked Richardson about the suggestion was that the mini-golf event took place on a Friday night recently and the library was closed but people saw there was an event going on and kept coming in. The library board will keep discussing the option of keeping the library open longer. Redcliff Library will make an effort to use more social media to engage more with the public.

Electronic voting machines turned off
Council defeated the motion to purchase the $8,000 electronic voting machine for October’s election. The ballots will go back to the old hand counting ballot system. The decision came as a surprise to Mayor Ernie Reimer.
“It sounded like we were going that way to do that and just get with the times,” said Reimer. “I remember the last time I ran for mayor, we had to wait until way into the evening before we found out who won the election. It’s a slow process when they count it one at a time and if it’s close, they have to do a re-count. It can drag on and on. I wish it could’ve went the other way myself.”

COPS funding

Councilors had a discussion about funding the COPS program for the amount of $3,118 over two years with the funds coming out of the newly-formed $5,000 council initiatives-community support account. Council passed the motion and will give the organization $1,559 this year and in 2018.