The Altona mayor says collaboration between town council and community organizations will be a priority in 2019.

Altona town council saw a near complete renewal following October municipal elections, and Al Friesen said learning to work together will be the first step.

"We have new faces and so we need to work as a team," he said. "That means we have reviewed our bylaws and one of the roles of council is to create policy and that's done through bylaws. We're working our way through them, many of them haven't been looked at or dealt with in like four or five years, so this is a good chance for us to do that."

In addition, Friesen said council intends to collaborate with Altona Community Development, Altona and District Chamber of Commerce, and the Supporting Entrepreneurs through Economic Development (SEED) project to redfine their roles within the community.

"We recognize there's either a bit of overlap or a gap, or that community residents aren't exactly sure where that's all at, and we need to clarify that, and we hope or intend to do that sometime in the new year," Friesen said.

He added that council will challenge itself to also work more closely with Rhineland Municipality.

Aside from building community relationships, Friesen said bringing fiber optics and Internet access to residents and businesses in the Altona area will continue to be top of mind for council, as well as the establishment of curbside compost pick-up.

"We've been in active discussions on curbside compost. It's not a huge, huge item but I think it says the right things about the community, and the community residents are saying we should move in that direction. So the intent is to create a plan for household waste and we are actively working on that. We've established a working group and we'll hopefully make progress on that too," he said.