Published in The BANAR December 1997
by Al Ross, Civic Affairs
In the previous BANAR, we reported that the Community Hall project was essentially at a standstill, since the tenders for the Arena Annex came in significantly over budget. This is still the case, but there has been some activity, and the community hall
project is very much alive.
The last issue contained an article with a questionnaire and a ballot, and residents were asked their views with regard to support for the community hall project. The ballot asked the question – whether the community would support a tax increase of approximately $4.00 per year over the next 15yrs, as a method of raising the necessary funds to see the completion of the hall with a budget of $430,000. The City received responses from 79 households representing approximately 2.63% of residents. This figure does not give a true indication of the community since the sample was deemed statistically not representative of feedback from our community.
Of those who responded, 78.5% supported the community hall, 64.5% supported the current design, 14 % would like to explore other options. 62% of respondents were willing to contribute funds to the construction of a community hall. However only 49% supported the increase in tax proposal., and 13% said they would pay only if a second option were explored.
The BCA, RPB and the City met in November to discuss “where we go from here”. A variety of options were discussed with the most favoured one being the addition of a second floor area over the arena crush space. Others included the use of available space in some of the strip malls in the Hamlet, and the construction of a separate building at a location yet to be determined. The main problem concerning many of these ideas is the provisioning of adequate parking space. There are further meetings planned with the City, which will be reported in subsequent issues of the BANAR.
Regardless of which concept is selected, there will be a real need for our community to do some serious fund raising. There are some avenues that are being looked into by the BCA and Councillor Bloess, but we are looking for new ideas, and any suggestion would be appreciated.