As our post-Thanksgiving thoughts turn to political campaigns, it is only right to haul out a subject that has come to dominate recent discussions surrounding continued community growth. Purely and simply, the subject is accommodations.
An article in this newspaper has outlined some of the dilemma that has plagued this community for more than three years.
The major problems are finding affordable housing for low to middle income residents, accommodating those who wish to pay a temporary visit to the city, but can't find a hotel room, and our ongoing concern that even those with a few dollars and inclination, still can't get the job done due to personnel shortages in the skilled trades.
So that leads to the Catch-22 situation. We bring in skilled workers to help us do the jobs that need to be done, but there is no place for them to stay. Labour camps provide a partial solution, but what appears to be happening now is that the labourers may come but their spouses and families are being left behind. Recent school enrolment numbers bear this out.
We have a city that grew by nearly 1,600 people in the past two years, yet school registration numbers have remained static in Estevan. That's not healthy. Student enrolment numbers in the other 32 facilities in the South East Cornerstone Public School Division have increased by well over 200 while they are negligible in Estevan and the immediate surrounding area. That clearly spells out that something is wrong in our population dynamics, in our public infrastructure and logistics.
We find in the other corner that popular public events are being cancelled, compromised or not even being planned. That obviously leads to loss of income and goodwill.
We can turn to regional and provincial agencies for assistance, but it's a well documented fact that in their world, they are restricted by their legislation and mandates. They are required to continually look at the "big picture." That means they aren't allowed to focus only on Estevan. There are housing and business pressures in Weyburn, Oxbow, Stoughton and Moosomin.
Just as the regional health authority can't focus solely on finding doctors for Estevan, nor can regional and provincial development agencies turn their attention only to the Energy City. They'd like to help, they tell us, but the problems are larger than your city.
So that means that only Estevanites can look at the "Estevan picture" to try and solve the problem. We need to look within ourselves to arrive at a solution. Dependence on a provincial or regional body outside of funding assistance, just isn't doing it. The response is generally far too slow or non-existent.
We're not out to preach a renegade approach to community housing and development, but we would encourage those who are capable of thinking well outside the box, and those who are also used to thinking inside the box, to formulate some "made in Estevan," solutions. Otherwise we are doomed to continue down the slow and not-so-sure path of community growth that is, quite frankly, gaining us few friends and a lot of doubters. Our infrastructure can't keep up with the influx of people.
Growth within a community involves more than an increase in population.
We don't profess to have the answers, but we know we have among us a core of leaders and those who can get things done. It's just a matter of unleashing them so they can do it.
