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City council report: New city website in the works

Flin Flon’s official web page is getting a makeover. The City of Flin Flon’s new website will be online before summer, according to officials who attended the April 16 meeting of city council.
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Flin Flon’s official web page is getting a makeover.

The City of Flin Flon’s new website will be online before summer, according to officials who attended the April 16 meeting of city council. Firm details about the new site, including an official roll-out date, have not been made public, but the new homepage for the city is likely to be released within the next eight to 10 weeks.

“It’s absolutely exciting what’s going on with it and there will be feedback opportunities within that website for people to give us feedback. We will be monitoring and responding to that. That’s another avenue of communication to open,” said city chief administrative officer Glenna Daschuk.

“It’s a work in progress. We don’t have an exact date, but we will definitely be giving everybody a heads-up that it’s on its way.”

Mayor Cal Huntley added that the city will attempt to update the new site more often than the current site. Current minutes for city council meetings, which were at one point added not long after meetings, have not been posted for any meetings since January, while some public notices and community announcements are also out of date.

“One of the things we want to make sure is, when the new website goes live, that the systems are in place with updating it with information on a regular basis, so it keeps current. The worst thing we could do is have a nice, splashy website that stays the same and is outdated in six months,” said Huntley.

Internet agreement

Internet service at city facilities in Flin Flon could soon be getting a lot faster.

An agreement between the city and communications company Netset was approved and ratified for signature at the meeting. The deal, labelled in city documents as the Internet Circuit Agreement, will provide enhanced Internet service to city-owned facilities to improve external and internal communication.

“This is actually going to improve the connectivity between our buildings. It’s not going to affect the whole community, but it’s going to affect city services,” said Daschuk.

The plan is not a measure to encourage city-wide Wi-Fi, one of the key action items outlined in the city’s strategic plan released earlier in the evening. However, work on improving the city’s Internet service has begun, according to Huntley.

“We are working on the high-speed Internet issue within the community and I can’t say anything for sure, but hopefully, reasonably quickly, we’ll see some initiatives proceed,” added Huntley.

Task force

Councillor Colleen Arnold provided council with a short report on a recent visit to a regional forum in Thompson.

Arnold represented the city at the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO) Northern Urban Reserve, Municipality and Economic Development Forum April 10.

A report released by MKO in conjunction with the Rural Development Institute at Brandon University included information regarding the GDP of Indigenous peoples in Manitoba, examined the positive impacts of urban reserves and featured projections of First Nations labour and work statistics.

The report states that Indigenous people in northern Manitoba spent about $1.9 billion in 2016 – representing almost one-fifth of the northern Manitoba economy – and about $565 million towards Manitoba’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“I received a lot of information about the benefits of partnerships with Indigenous people and on urban reserves, the benefits of that,” said Arnold of the meeting.

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