Recent discussions around planning tables in the Energy City have generally focused on our city’s need to spruce up exterior features in time for the Saskatchewan Summer Games that are less than 10 months away.
Progress has been made on several fronts, but once the last banner has been folded up and the final medals awarded and the podiums hauled away to be used somewhere else, our city will still be in dire need of some basic, non-glamorous ground work.
Now that we have spent the required millions to get our water and sewer treatment system into the 21st century, we’ll soon have to turn our attention to other basic services such as underground water lines and sewer collection before, again, tackling a badly needed paving program.
In fact, one of the biggest chores for civic planners and doers, will be the need to establish and then stick to a stringent priority list while continuing to lobby senior governments hard for the return of some of our tax money to help pay for some of these required projects.
The city has gone through a period of population and business growth. Now we must do something to retain them.
One item that has come up frequently in conversations lately is the emerging need to build a new high school sooner, rather than later. It’s been a topic of reluctant conversations around the South East Cornerstone Public School Division’s table over the past three years and all the trustees are well aware of the fact that ECS poses a problem that is not going away.
The recent renovation and extension of the Weyburn Comprehensive School that was marred by several glitches and a hefty price tag, probably hasn’t done much to instill confidence on the planning side.
A potential private, public partnership (P3) model is out of the question, since the $40 to $60 million effort would be well beneath the entry-level target that makes P3 projects efficient.
ECS is showing its age as it closes in on its 50th birthday party. It’s a well-used, well-worn educational facility.
Local, regional and now divisional school boards have spent millions of dollars simply doing continual roof repairs. That situation alone tells us this is a public facility well past its “best before” date.
We are advocates for the ECS mandate that includes equal opportunities for 800 to 900 students to pursue academic and vocational training.
But they need to be able to do it in an agreeable setting.
We also suggest that now the much-maligned WCS project is nearing completion, the Cornerstone trustees need to find time to set their sights on the needs of those in their largest community and their biggest school.
There will be no need to quibble over site selection, since foresight decades ago ensured ample acreage would be available to accommodate a replacement facility right in the current school’s backyard.
Foresight for future needs was used back in 1967-69 when ECS arrived on the scene, so the precedent is set.
It’s time to start looking seriously at a new ECS. We don’t want to have to hear our residents, students and school board members lamenting 10 years from now that “good old ECS will just have to do us for another few years, because there’s just no way we can afford a new one right now.”
That would be an excuse, not a plan.
