It's been an interesting first few months for the new Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Woodlands. Douglas Oliver served on council from 2002 to 2014, sometimes serving as deputy reeve. Oliver was elected as Reeve this past October. He says two-thirds of the council is new to their position.

"I have a group of four councillors that were elected that don't have any council experience," says Oliver. "I'm trying to lead them gently into municipal politics. We've gotten their feet wet already and we're working well."

Darryl Langrell, Darrell Sinclair, Bryan Myskiw and Valerie Stelck are the new councillors. Lorna Broadfoot and Carl Fleury were re-elected to council.

Regarding 2023, Reeve Oliver says they have a lot to look forward to.

"We have to plan our budget for this year coming up. There's a lot of numbers that we have to crunch and decide on which projects are going to go forward," says Oliver. "We have a water project coming from Stonewall to the community of Warren that we have to look at what that kind of funding is going to cost us. There's a proposal for a personal care home being built in the town of Stonewall in the near future. Our municipality will be involved in that."

He says all of the projects will cost the municipality money down the road so they will need to consider that, as well as the costs of maintaining roads, drainage, and infrastructure. He adds they do not want to taxes to get too high.

Council's first meeting of the year took place on the 10th.

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