TISDALE — Al Jellicoe, Tisdale’s mayor, said a lot was accomplished in 2019.
“Probably the biggest item we got was a new sewer lift station and new piping out to the lagoon, and we’re going to get a new lagoon cell in 2020.”
Jellicoe said the sewer lift station was needed in order to continue having Tisdale expand.
“We were at capacity and then we did get some federal and provincial assistance, so we had to do it. We were at full capacity and we hope to grow in the next few years.”
The last Canadian census in 2016 found Tisdale to have 3,136 residents. Jellicoe’s goal is to grow Tisdale to about 4,000 people.
“More people to help the business people in town,” he said. “We’ve got really good recreation facilities, we need a few more people just to make everything go.”
To meet this goal, he would like to get a couple hundred people a year for the next few years.
Other highlights from 2019 include the continuation of waterline replacements and paving.
“We’ve had very few water breaks but we still have about 20 blocks of waterline replacement we have to get done to get up to current standards.”
In 2019, Jellicoe said there were about three breaks, but only one in the winter time.
“The other two weren’t serious breaks. We used to have 20, so one or two is pretty reasonable.”
The waterline replacement is expected to continue to take place over the next 10 years to finish removing outdated lines.
Another highlight for the 2019 year was the new Town of Tisdale sign, containing the updated slogan “opportunity grows here.”
Jellicoe said the town hopes to get one or two additional signs added per year, covering each entrance into town. While the additional signs will be similar, he said they may be smaller given the highest traffic going into town is from the west – where the current sign is.
The RECplex continued receiving renovations in 2019, with a new sound system for the rink, and entrance ways receiving new carpet tiles.
This is going to continue into 2020. In the coming year, there are going to be some work done between the town and the school, fixing air conditioning and ensuring there are no leaks.
Jellicoe said the 2020 year will be “much the same.”
“We’re still planning on doing our annual paving, picking out some of the worst streets,” he said.
Choosing which streets will be paved are still under review, but streets that had water lines replaced in 2018 will be prioritized.
“We always replace water lines and let everything settle and then the next year they do curbs and then the next year we do paving. We got three blocks of paving we got to get done.”
The town aims to complete about five blocks of paving per year, which leaves two blocks of streets for the town to choose from.
Jellicoe said composting will be a big item in 2020.
“We’ve got some grants to do some work at the landfill. We got a new cell there for garbage disposal, we are looking into composting.”
He said the town is currently looking at curbside composting “very closely.” The first priority for the town is to have the landfill operational in 2020 and accepting compost, with or without curbside pickup.
“Composting would assist our landfill greatly. We’ve done the recycling, we could even do a little bit more in that regard, but composting has come up as one of the areas we could easily take 20, 30 or 40 per cent of our garbage out of the landfill. Compost it and turn it into something useful.”
Sidewalk replacement is not something residents can expect in 2020, outside of the downtown core.
“We’re trying to keep sidewalks in the downtown area,” Jellicoe explained.
While full sidewalk replacement is outside of the town’s plans, improvements to the walking trails in the community are something that the town is looking into.
The town is looking at having the walking trails that exist in town expand further north, and into the west side of town.
“It’s surprising how many people use walking trails whether it’s for themselves, for their pets,” he said.
“We’ve pretty much covered the whole river but we want something down past the town square, to the west side of town and then up in the north part. There are some open spaces up there, get some walking trails around Mount Tisdale. We’re just looking at where it would fit in.”
