Community hall discussion comes back to council table
By Timothy Schafer
The horse came before the cart as city council tried to muscle in on a regional district/Community Futures-led community hall initiative before its input was officially required.
Grand Forks city council grappled in its regular meeting Jan. 16 with the notion of relinquishing control over the initial planning for a community hall, proposed recently by Area D regional district director Roly Russell and Community Futures Boundary general manager Wendy McCulloch.
The two had asked in a Jan. 5 letter for confirmation of council’s willingness to move forward in discussing the initiative and a “resolution” that supported the project.
After much discussion, council supported the idea as proposed by Community Futures Boundary, to explore the feasibility of a community centre facility for the Grand Forks’ area “providing that any proposed financial elements involving municipal funds pertaining to the suggested project be brought to council for consideration prior to implementation.”
Council also agreed to pass the resolution that it would support Community Futures Boundary and Russell to take the lead on the project. But it wasn’t without much debate and eventually begrudging consent.
Coun. Julia Butler initially wondered if council wanted to support a conversation to see how it could become more involved with a community hall idea, since she did not see the community hall project in the strategic plan update, which had been delivered earlier that night in the council meeting.
Coun. Chris Hammett said that Area D and Community Futures had been advancing the conversation, but the city should be involved right now.
“I think the city should have a pretty big role in this as well, because we have our own ideas of what we would like to see,” she said.
City chief administrative officer Doug Allin said there was a lot of work done on the idea in 2006 — as well as drawings of a facility — and now, 10 years later, the group spearheading that project has been dissolved.
He said there will be further public consultation needed, a discussion on where the funding will come from, as well as finding a suitable site for the facility.
“I believe it would be important for us to consider the staff implications to make sure if it does pass over to our organization we know what does that mean to us and what are we taking off of our discussions to date,” he said.
“I anticipate it would be two years to go into this before we could finally get it to the point where we would have it ready to go after a grant,” he added. “It sounds like it’s going to be a great project, but it’s going to have a lot of moving parts.”
The hall would also eventually be a referendum question to see if the community would want to fund it, Allin said.
He suggested the city step back from the planning process now — letting the regional district and Community Futures take the reins — and come in a few months from now and offer assistance.
Hammet was concerned about what might or might not be contained in the plan — commercial kitchen, gymnasium, convention centre, hotel, etc. — if the city was not involved at the outset.
Coun. Beverly Tripp wondered if the Russell and Community Futures could bring reports to city hall for input from council, while Coun. Christine Thompson wondered what form the hall might take.
Butler asked if council could have a representative on the regional table, if one existed, to stay directly involved in the process. Allin said he did not think one had been set up yet.
Coun. Neil Krog said he had seen this idea come forward before and, although it was a legitimate desire to want to have input before the project got rolling, he said it wasn’t the right time to do so.
“What I see is a group of people who are willing to do the work to see about a community centre, and if they decide they want it outside the city limits … that’s fine,” he said. “When they are ready with what they have, they will come. Because if they want us as a funding partner, all those questions will have to be answered.”
He said council should let another group try and get the project off the ground, where council had failed in the past when too many cooks spoiled the soup.
“Unless we have something concrete, we are literally in limbo on this one,” said Mayor Frank Konrad.
Allin suggested inviting Russell and McCulloch to a future committee-of-the-whole meeting and ask them questions about the planning details, but he advised council to support them doing the project, check in at the end of the month, and proceed from there.
Russell had already sat in on the Dec. 12 committee-of-the-whole meeting and asked council directly if it wanted to re-open discussions on the logistics of construction of a community hall for the city.
He asked council if it was willing to enter into a conversation again and try and figure out what the potential now for a community hall in Grand Forks might look like. A survey through Boundary Community Futures went out to residents late last year about the prospects of a hall, and an overwhelming amount of people said yes.
The survey had 312 respondents of which 96 per cent said they wanted a community hall.
In December Russell disagreed that it would require a change in priorities of council.
“What we are requesting at this point is that council be interested in stating if it is willing (to go) further in this conversation or not,” he said.
Operational costs are an issue if it moves forward, Russell acknowledged, but it was not the intent of the question.