Nipawin council has signed a new lease with the people operating the Evergreen’s food services after they changed their ownership structure.
Instead of a numbered company that’s a conglomerate of interests, one of those interests, Spice Hospitality, Inc., will be taking direct control of the operation. Council voted to switch the food lease from the numbered company to Spice Hospitality for the remainder of the contract’s term after talking in a closed session during the June 26 meeting.
Spice Hospitality is owned by Harry Rai, who runs a restaurant in Prince Albert.
Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator, said council is feeling positive about the new agreement.
“It’s now under the direct oversight of Harry and Harry is a professional restauratnteur with much experience and an impeccable reputation,” he said. “He has given us every assurance that he is going to continue to work on the operation. He’s taking this very seriously and he wants this to succeed.”
The administrator said Rai has been working diligently to address all of council’s concerns.
“We will be diligently monitoring it and actively seeing feedback from the public as to how they feel about the services.”
BID funding concerns
The chair of the Business Improvement District is concerned about the town’s plan to switch to funding services via a fee-for-service system.
Tom Weegar, the district’s chair, wrote in a letter to council saying that they should see his organization as a quasi-municipal body that’s working to achieve the town’s goals and it should be funded with that in mind.
He also requested that council implement a plan to fund the organization through a business levy.
“Council has set their budget for the year, they’ve set their tax structure for the year,” Elliot said. “They determined earlier at that time that they would not proceed in 2017 with the BID levy this current calendar year.”
The administrator added that a business levy could be discussed during the creation of next year’s budget, which could begin as early as this fall.
