NIPAWIN — Council has made it so no schools within the RM and Town of Nipawin need to pay to access the Pool @ Central Park for the remainder of the school year.
Council was told the full fee of $85 per hour minimizes the ability of schools to visit the pool due to budget constraints.
“Having access to the pool is beneficial because they’re exposed to an aquatic environment in a controlled manner,” said Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator. “Hopefully there is some ability to provide some water safety orientation and training to the youngsters. Council is supportive of that for the remainder of this school year.”
This occurred at the council meeting on March 25.
Elliott said the town is hoping to encourage schools to use the pool more frequently
“That will be in discussion with the school district, of course, and with the individual schools, but that’s the end goal: to have the youth able to access it as much as possible in a way that’s beneficial for the schools as well.”
According to Elliott this is part of a larger the town has with giving access of town facilities to the schools.
“Administration will do a bit of work on developing a bit of a long-term proposal for school use of all of our town facilities,” Elliott said. “In many municipalities there is what’s called “joint use agreements”, a sharing of facilities. We have certainly had that here for many years but with the pool having recently been upgraded and more acceptable and in a better condition we want to upgrade, if you will, the sharing of those facilities.”
Kitchen upgrades
At the same meeting a tender was awarded to ACS Contracting for electrical upgrades for the Evergreen Centre’s kitchen area. The tender was awarded at the cost of approximately $12,000 plus tax.
“What the operator has found over time is that the electrical services in there are not quite sufficient for their uses. They find themselves blowing breakers more frequently than they should,” Elliott said. “Those challenges affect ventilation and other things within that area so this is an upgrade to ensure that there is sufficient electric supply in the area.”
