Drumheller hands out 'Dino Bucks' to reward mask-wearing, physical distancing

The Town of Drumheller is going to reward people for wearing masks and using hand sanitizer, rather than pass a bylaw to enforce the behaviour.

The reward will come in the form of "Dino Bucks" — vouchers that can be redeemed at area merchants.

"We don't have a mandatory mask policy, and that's the whole reason that we started this," Darryl Drohomerski, the chief administrative officer for the town of Drumheller, told The Homestretch.

"The challenge of a bylaw is that you require people to have enforcement, and we just felt we couldn't be everywhere 24/7 to be able to enforce something like this, and felt that it wasn't fair to retailers, which is the reason we actually wanted to give out the carrot as opposed to the stick."

The idea is to reward people for doing the right thing with respect to COVID-19 safety measures.

"We want people to sanitize as they come in the store, to make sure they practice social distancing, and to wear masks," Drohomerski said.

"We're handing out Dino Bucks to retailers to be able to reinforce that behaviour and promote the behaviour."

The Dino Bucks vouchers will be given in five-dollar denominations, and can be used at any participating retailer.

"We looked at whether it should be a dollar or two dollars," Drohomerski said. "We thought well, five dollars is a nice reward for people to be able to just show them that they're doing the right thing."

Participating retailers will have a sign in the window or at the till.

There are about 1,000 vouchers to hand out, divided among about 25 retailers at the moment.

"We're expecting more to jump on board as the program launches, as well as some of our elected officials are going to be handing them out to people, again as a reward," Drohomerski said.

Starting Friday

The program, which rolls out on Friday, is costing the town $5,000.

"That's what the town's committed to, and what we have is a 90 per cent funding from the town, and then 10 per cent by retailers," Drohomerski said.

"Basically, it's a way to help reinforce from the retailers that they have a bit of responsibility in all of this as well, so that they're not just handing these things out without giving a thought to them."

Feedback has been great so far, Drohomerski said, with more retailers jumping on board each day.

"We've heard nothing but good things about it from our residents and our community, who really are happy to see that we're trying something different, as well as people from outside the community. We've had a lot of response from people who really want to collect them."

The Dino Bucks program will run until the end of September, when council will re-evaluate.

With files from The Homestretch.