Council endorses plan for Coalhurst’s 30th anniversary as a town

Posted on October 3, 2024 by Sunny South News

By Nikki Jamieson
Sunny South News

Rebranding and preparations for an upcoming historic anniversary were part of the discussion around a theme for Coalhurst’s 30th anniversary next year.

During their regular Sept. 17 meeting, Coalhurst town council discussed how the Town’s 30th anniversary celebrations could be used to advance strategic goals.

In 2025, the Town of Coalhurst will be celebrating it’s 30th anniversary since becoming incorporated as a town, and will be hosting a number of special events and activities as part of celebrations. The Town has previously celebrated it’s 100th anniversary of being incorporated as a community in 2013.

In a report to council, submitted by Mayor Lindsay Montina, CAO Karlene Betteridge, and director of community development Kristy Henning, it was proposed to use the anniversary as a platform to celebrate the Town’s history and advance strategic goals of community growth, economic development, and beautification. Some of these ideas include:

• Leveraging the Anniversary to achieve strategic goals in the 2022-2025 Strategic Plan, such as showcasing the community for prospective residents and businesses, creatin gathering spaces, and beautification initiatives.

• Implement a community beautification theme with a 1930s aesthetic

• Rebrand and launch a new Town website

• Utilizing existing events and programs, such as Miners Days and National Volunteer Week, into anniversary celebrations.

• Creating opportunities throughout the year to embrace and share the town’s history, including its Indigenous past

When asked where the 1930s beautification theme came from by coun. Scott Akermans, Betteridge said it came from past Council discussions finding a “niche identity” around the concept of creating a town that’s centered on the community, family, and history.

“There’s a lot of ideas around how to make things look and how to make things feel,” said Betteridge, noting they’ve also been having discussions around events as well. “The 1930s for Coalhurst was a time when the community was thriving, and that’s really when family was the center of everything, and the workers were at the mines and that’s when everybody was taking care of each other, and there was a horrible, horrible disaster that happen that is part of our history. So, the 1930s is really about honoring that, and bringing the community back to a place of thriving celebration and honoring that.”

 Montina added that from conversations of what their community actually looks like, and as the aesthetic idea was “grounded in something”, adopting the style moving forward to the 100th anniversary of the 1935 mining disaster would pay homage to that and give the town a distinct look.

Coun. Deborah Florence noted that during last year’s budget discussions, the town did include plans to upgrade the town’s website, and asked if they were looking at increasing the budget for it to do the branding. Betteridge noted that while the plan did contain a lot of ideas, an endorsement would help shape the budget moving forward, as administration would be able to better look into what these things would look like, including rebranding for the website. Henning said it would require increasing the current budget for developing the website, and that she had been reaching out to creative and web development agencies to get a more realistic figure.

“To date, there hasn’t been a brand that’s actually been developed for Coalhurst. We have a logo near the table line, but we don’t have a brand voice and proper brand documents and guiding documents,” said Henning. “That would be a little more in-depth work in order to do that.”

During discussion, Florence said she appreciated the intent behind the overarching theme, she had an issue with the way the proposed motion was set up as proposed, which stated that “Council endorse the proposed events and activities as per Schedule A for Coalhurst’s 30th anniversary as a Town”. Appendix A in the report contained a list of proposed activities and events

“Councils only role in event planning is setting the budget, ensuring we have staff and admins for it to get the level of service we want done. We don’t get into the weeds of what events are happening and when, similar to how we don’t drive the graders, we just ensure there is a grader and somebody to drive it,” said Florence, also raising issue with no budget line being attached to it.

Akkermans noted that the report was put together by both the town mayor an administration, so there was “a little bit of both on there”. While he was happy to see the list of events being brought forward, he agreed with Florence that it was a more administrative task, and could be brought within the “corporate services silo”, with council setting the budget and administration “knock it out of the park”. 

Coun. Jesse Potrie argued the motion was more for the endorsement of supporting the effects, rather than approving different line item. Montina agreed that the motion was more for the endorsement component, adding the events could be subject to change.

“It’s more about the concept and getting council’s endorsement of the concept of actually utilizing the 30th anniversary,” said Montina. “The budget component would come at a later date, but it would allow them to actually start the work.”

Council passed an amended motion, as amended, to endorse the proposed Coalhurst 30-anniversay plan, and to launch work toward a 10-year plan in preparation for the 1935 mine disaster centennial. Council also passed a motion to move discussions about branding and public space design included in the RFD presented at the Sept. 17, 2024, council meeting be referred to Committee of the Whole.