The Town of Okotoks in partnership with the Okotoks RCMP detachment will be starting a pilot project that hopes to better the community when it comes to service on September 8.

Every Thursday the front service counter will remain open longer by one hour at the Southridge Emergency Services Building.

Protectives Director for the Town, Scott Roberts says the building will now be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. on Thursdays.

"We heard the concerns from the community that we weren't meeting their needs in terms of being open a little bit later than the average work day so the people can get here from their home, their jobs in Calgary or other points outside of town," he says.

For now the new hours will just be for Thursday but Roberts says if there's more demand for more days during the project it could be more.

"We're going to look at it for about six months, we did try this a while back a couple years ago and we found that there wasn't as big of a demand at that time but our council has heard some concerns from some of the citizens and they came to us to say 'hey let's give this another try' and we're going to do that."

The counter will be operated by Town support staff as per usual as they help serve the local detachment.

Roberts says the project was something that the mounties were fully on board with supporting.

"The one that's important here, this is a program we're doing in partnership with the RCMP. The RCMP are very in tune to the needs to the community and they support this 100 percent so we're really hoping that this is what the community wants."

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