Town of Slave Lake council met on April 21 at 6 p.m. in council chambers. The town’s 2025-2026 meeting schedule says regular council and committee meetings are held in council chambers beginning at 6 p.m., and residents can attend in person or watch on the town’s YouTube channel.

The council discussed the planning, assessment season, development files and the financial follow-up that usually comes with this time of year.

Planning bylaw in the background

One of the bigger public files hanging over the meeting was the Intermunicipal Development Plan Bylaw.

This bylaw is about changing the light from industrial to recreation parks and schools type of light near the airport.

The land area in there is called SW-1-73-6-W5.

This is one of the projects included in the Intermunicipal Development Plan.

The town posted a public hearing ad for that bylaw on April 8, and the archive shows it remained active through April 20, one day before council met. That timing suggests the bylaw was still very much part of the council conversation around the April 21 meeting.

The Leader wrote an article about this in the April 22 issue.
This discussion was approved by the Town of Slave Lake council.

Assessment season still front and centre

April is also assessment season, and that was clearly part of the public backdrop.
The town’s assessment notice says 2026 assessment notices were sent out on Feb. 19 and that the final date to file an assessment complaint is April 28.

Development file posted days before
meeting

Another active public file was a development permit ad posted April 17. The notice says Development Permit Application #79.11.25 for 112 6 Avenue NW, a short-term rental home lot use, was approved.

Anyone opposing the development has until May 8 to appeal.
That is the sort of item that may or may not get extended discussion at a council meeting, but it adds to the picture of what was happening in town at the time.

Budget season not finished

Another reason the April 21 meeting matter is timing.
Back in December, council passed an interim 2026 budget, according to Lakeside Leader’s Dec. 9 council notebook by Pearl Lorentzen.

That interim budget covered the first part of the year while council continued work toward a final budget.

By late April, that budget work would still be part of the wider council context, whether directly on the agenda or sitting behind other financial decisions.

Council was meeting at a time when planning files were active, assessment season was nearing an important deadline, development notices were moving through the system and the town was still operating in the shadow of its interim budget process.

Slave Lake RCMP on police reporting

Staff Sgt. Casey Bruyns, the Slave Lake RCMP detachment commander attended the Town of Slave Lake council meeting to discuss the Slave Lake RCMP quarterly report.

This report is dated from October to December 2025. Bruyns talked about the prolific offenders, missing person cases, and some other updates on the RCMP staff.

“It took time and resources,” said Bruyns at the council meeting, when he talked about the missing person cases.
He also talked about the events that the Slave Lake RCMP attended.

For staff information, Bruyns said that for the Slave Lake RCMP, there are four officers working and two detachment support working at their location. Please see Page 7 for the complete article.

State of the Lake

Mayor Francesca Ward greeted Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Alex Pavcek.

It was his birthday on the day of the meeting.
The council thanked him for all his hard work at the office.

Next Town Council meeting

No dates are available yet for the next town meeting, but it will always be on the second and third Tuesday of the month.