It's hard to believe that the conversation of summer swimming lessons has come up up at Okotoks Town Council in the month of November, but a move was made to help local residents have the first dive at them.

Council approved that local registration periods be extended to a week instead of 72 hours.

In the past registrations were available to locals only within the first three days when lesson schedules are released.

But after Monday's meeting, the grace period for parents to sign their kids up is now a full week before the lessons are open to the public.

Community Services Director with the Town of Okotoks Susan Laurin says giving families more time to register with benefit kids taking the lessons close to home.

"One of the things that we've noticed over the last couple of years, so its been a trend over the past 4-5 lessons is that its becoming increasingly difficult to register for learn-to-swim lessons, so our pool and our aquatic centres is extremely busy."

Laurin says a couple sets of lessons are filled up almost faster than when they add them to the pool schedule.

"For that pre-school level, levels 1-4 is extremely difficult to register because those lessons are so popular," she says. "So one of the things Town Council wanted to do is to be able to make our local residents from Okotoks and the M.D. have a chance to register for those lessons."

Laurin knows even with the extra time for locals to register for swim lessons, you still shouldn't wait 6.5 days to do it.

"I would still make sure to register in the first day or two," she says. "Because the lesson times that are extremely popular always seem to fill up in the first half a day, our lessons still fill up very quickly within the first 3-5 hours."

Registration for Summer 2016 lesson does get started till March.

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email us at news@okotoksonline.com