The Foothills MD may take over Municipal Enforcement for the Town of High River at a cost of $48,000.

Mayor Craig Snodgrass says the by-law officers they had before couldn't write tickets and council really wanted to go that route.

"You know the RCMP can't be patrolling our school zones at all times and controlling residential streets like, what I refer to as our Deerfoot, High Country Drive," he says. We can't have RCMP sitting on these roads all the time, it's an expensive thing and we only have so many and they are a busy, busy group of people."

The mayor says going with CPO 1's, who are able to access data bases and write tickets for moving or parking violations, was important to council.

He says there's a huge cost to hire, train and equip officers who can take on those tasks and the MD already has that in place.

"Working with them (Foothills MD) we decided to contract it out to them, they've got an excellent group of staff," Snodgrass says. "Through attrition and just not re-hiring we've reduced our budget amount that goes to our protective services because of staff that has left so it didn't require laying anybody off to do this.

He says in 2013 the town had a core group of very good by-law people, but they were handcuffed because they couldn't really enforce the rules they were charged with upholding.

MD of Foothills Mayor Larry Spilak says so far it hasn't gotten past the conversation level yet.

He says it's a good idea, that makes sense for both the Town and the MD, but he says no commitment has been made yet on the part of the MD until they flesh out the details and run it by their council.