Cooler heads could yet prevail in the ongoing saga of the Battlefords Ag Society and their lease dispute with the City of North Battleford.
That appears to be the hope of Harvey Walker, director with the Ag Society, in speaking to the News-Optimist Thursday.
"The parties have to agree to work together without acrimony and find a reasonable solution," said Walker.
He doesn't see that happening before the official community plan comes out, but after that, "there's got to be some good dialogue." Walker expressed the view that it was time for both parties to back away from their current positions and "be willing to discuss reasonable alternatives."
Walker spoke to the News-Optimist in response to a report in the Oct. 3 edition about the discussion that went on at a North Battleford council meeting last month.
The subject of the Ag Society's lease with the City arose after council received correspondence from Robert Tannahill, who called for a long-term lease for the Ag Society.
The Ag Society is currently in the middle of a 10-year lease, but the deal has a six-month termination clause, a clause that has been a subject of much consternation from Ag Society supporters.
Walker says that termination clause has made the lease a short-term one.
"Whether it's a ten-year lease or whether it's a hundred-year lease, if as it does in this instance contain a six-month termination clause, then effectively it's a six-month lease."
All the longer term does, said Walker, is eliminate the necessity to renegotiate the lease at an earlier time than the 10-year mark. "In terms of the ability of the city to cancel it, it's a six-month lease."
In response to Mayor Ian Hamilton's comment that the clause was "an out clause, it's just like any other lease," Walker told the News-Optimist the mayor was "terribly mistaken about long-term commercial leases" in thinking that.
He adds that in his long experience as a lawyer these types of provisions are rarely seen.
"I've never, up to now, seen a six-month termination clause in a commercial lease," said Walker.
"No viable forward-planning entrepreneur would enter into a lease that would allow the landlord, in this case the City, to terminate on six months notice."
He suggested most businesses wouldn't agree to such a provision. Walker pointed to the health clinic in the Frontier Mall as one example of what he was talking about, saying they would never enter an agreement where their lease could be terminated in six months.
"It's just not heard of," said Walker.
As for provisions in the lease for the Ag Society to be compensated in the event of termination based on fair market value or assets, Walker called that "terribly misleading."
"The fair market value of the Ag Society's assets out there are next to nothing. How do you value underground water lines? How do you value underground power lines that are not be used by anybody? How to you value 50- or 60-year-old barns?"
He said if the City wanted to compensate on the based of replacement value, that was a different story, but at fair market value it wouldn't work.
"It would end the society," said Walker.
The point Walker wanted to make was the Ag Society wanted to "work with the City to resolve this."
To this point there hasn't been much movement, and Walker says the city has not been willing to begin discussions prior to adoption of the official community plan. Still, Walker indicated he wants to see some sort of cooling off by both sides and for sides to be winning to discuss the various alternatives as soon as they are able to.
"I suppose that it's time to tone down the rhetoric and to let the parties step back from this somewhat, on both sides, entrenched positions and start talking to each other," said Walker.
"That won't happen before the election, may not be logistically possible before the official community plan is revealed, but that's the way this thing is going to be resolved, by finding a win-win situation instead of a win-loss situation."
