The Town of Nipawin is putting some effort to find ways to calm traffic down on Nipawin Road near the skateboard park to ensure the safety of children.
Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator, said council voted some time ago to make the highway in front of the skateboard park a 30 km/h zone.
The town’s operation’s standing committee has been talking about making improvements.
“We initially started with a conversation about making sure the necessary signage was in place advising people that it’s a 30 km/h zone because there’s a playground right there and kids crossing,” Elliott said.
That conversation then evolved to discuss other possibilities, like moving the traffic lights at the intersection of Nipawin Road and 2nd Avenue East east to the intersection of Nipawin Road and 4th Street West.
“We’ve talked about just a small flashing light or, perhaps, a full-blown pedestrian crosswalk,” Elliott said. “There’s a whole lot of ideas on the table. We’re looking into further options as to how to improve the safety there.”
The administrator emphasized that no decisions have been made nor any research done to see how much the options would cost at this point of time.
Bylaw enforcement review
Meanwhile, the town’s protective services standing committee is reviewing how bylaws are enforced.
“What we were doing was reviewing a number of our bylaws and trying to strengthen the language for enforcement, and also working with the bylaw officer on making sure that there’s a standard approach that he would employ in his enforcement, ” Elliott said.
The general idea is the officer would make a courtesy contact to those breaking a bylaw before proceeding to give official warnings and issue fines, depending on the nature of the infraction.
Elliott said the town was looking at the bylaw enforcement bylaws and making sure the language is consistent, current and defensible.
Agreement signed with Hawks
A three-year agreement has been signed between the town and the Nipawin Hawks.
The signed agreement, approved by council at their Oct. 23 meeting, includes the previous season, this season and the next season.
“It was a joint effort between the Hawks and the town to come up with provisions that made good sense,” Elliott said.
The administrator said the agreement looks a lot like the old one, but there’s a standardization of certain fees.
“I know in the past they’ve found they’ve been invoiced for some costs they frankly hadn’t expected at the end of the year,” he said. “This was really an effort to stabilize that so they are able to have reasonable expectations as to what the final invoices would look like.”
The hockey team will pay a flat fee for the regular season and an hourly fee for the playoffs. The town will install advertising for the team free of charge.
Town preparing to negotiate with union
The town is preparing to bargain with the union that represents its employees, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 777-1.
At a special council meeting Oct. 30, not open to the public, council voted to inform the union that it will negotiate a new collective agreement after the current one ends Dec. 31.
“We have been working at developing an opening position for the town for some time,” Elliott said. “That will ultimately be determined by council and then there will be a negotiating committee struck to begin this.”
Elliott said he’s not sure when negotiations will start, but he believes it will be in the new year. He said he’s hoping to have the contract finished in the first quarter of 2018.
Melfort recently signed a four-year agreement with its union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 777, which saw a one per cent wage increase in 2017, and a 2.5 per cent increase each year for 2018, 2019 and 2020. Elliott said the town would be looking at what happened with the contracts in other neighbouring towns.
