Cochrane's new town council is cramming before they are officially sworn into office on Monday, just one week after being elected.

Today they are finishing the second of a two-day retreat to understand the realities of governing after largely campaigning on ideas and ideals.

The orientation they are receiving at The Crossing at Ghost River covers the mandatory topics required for town councils and is, for the most part, an information session on the function of local government, peppered with specifics on how the Town of Cochrane operates. It includes such things as the role of council, role of CAO, conflict of interest, council code of conduct, the procedural bylaw and a council committee terms of reference review. 

There are five new faces on council with only incumbents Tara McFadden and Morgan Nagel returning. Yet it's not accurate to say they are all rookies. Mayor Jeff Genung served two years on council in the past and Alex Reed has served on a town council elsewhere, has an extensive background in academic governance and has served as chair of the town's planning commission. Susan Flowers knows the town's administrative procedures inside out after serving as FCSS manager for over 20 years.

Still, it's the honeymoon and in the early goings the new councillors were coming to grips of having risen to the top of the list of 15. What resonates when talking to all six of the councillors is how anxious they are to get to work and make the changes electors appear to favour.

"Most of the former council is gone and I think we needed that change," says Patrick Wilson, "That was what we were talking about the whole time; it was about the big ticket items of attempting to slow down residential growth and catching up infrastructure, meaning roads and meaning town services. We need to get to work on them immediately."

What we can also expect to see from Wilson is him exercising his belief of not over governing.

"I'm the kind of guy that I don't like government solutions to anything you can find another way to accomplish to achieve the same goal."

Alex Reed, too, looks forward to establishing a plan of action and hopes some of that will come out of the orientation, informal gatherings and discussions already taking place between councillors.

"We need to collectively get together and decide, after our organization hump, what our 90 day, 120 day priorities are and collectively move onwards with those. I'm anxious and interested to see what that discussions will be like."

Susan Flowers may have a long history with the town, but she's still excited about the different perspective of being a councillor.

"I hope we can really get stuff done and hope we really work well together," says Flowers. "I looking forward to representing the whole community and working with everybody in a whole new way."

Tara McFadden is the veteran of the group and is entering her fourth term. It's that experience she hopes to offer in helping charting the course of change.

"It's an exciting time. There was a lot of talk during the campaign of how we want to do things better here in Cochrane. It's an amazing town; let's make it even better."

"I really do have high hopes and there's a commitment to finding a new way of doing things. What I bring to the table is both that desire for the change to take things to  that next level but also the experience to understand what the problem is and what the solutions can look like."

Marni Fedeyko got the top vote of all the rookies, something she found humbling and believes her out of the box campaign had an impact.

She's not shell-shocked by the vote of confidence; actually quite the opposite. She wants to make immediate headway on improving communications and transparency for residents, which was a big part of her campaign

"I really hope that we embrace communications. It's a fresh start and I'd love to see live streaming happening almost immediately so we can get some accountability in place."

Morgan Nagel finished a thousand votes ahead of everyone with his campaign of improving traffic and infrastructure, slowing growth and keeping taxes in check.

Nagel had little support within the last council so he has high hopes that will change and also looks at it as a fresh start. 

"I want to figure out their dreams and passion for Cochrane, what they were elected to do, and I hope to offer them some of my experience as an incumbent to make them come true."

Council will be sworn in at 6:15 p.m. on Oct. 23, followed by an organizational meeting. Their first regular meeting follows.

Election results became official on Oct. 20.