Staff at Carbonear Rec Complex to get better change room

By Craig Westcott
November 3, 2023 Edition

Carbonear council has awarded a tender for renovations to a change room at the Recreation Complex but one item will be missing from this go-round of improvements – a water fountain for patrons to fill their bottles.
The debate about the lack of a fountain began with recreation committee chairman Malcolm Seymour making the motion last week to award the $44,275 (including HST) renovation job to Culture Contracting for changes to the staff room at the pool.
“Does that include the bathroom outside of the staff room?” asked councillor Danielle Doyle. “Because there’s extreme leakage going on there. There’s rust running down the wall, I mean it needs to be done sooner rather than later. And wasn’t there a water fountain to be included there for patrons to use, because there is no water fountain in that facility and I hear on a regular basis that would be nice, if people had somewhere to fill up instead of using a bathroom sink at the recreation complex.”
Recreation director Rob Button confirmed the washroom outside the staff room will be renovated, but there is no water fountain included in the tender. “This (contract) was mainly focused on the staff change room project,” Button explained. “But it is something we will look at for future consideration.”
Doyle asked if the committee would commit to including the fountain in its budget discussions for 2024. “Because that’s something that comes to me on a regular basis, that there is nowhere (to fill up),” Doyle said. “We’re wanting people to reuse water bottles and stuff like that instead of buying new water bottles all the time. We have great drinking water in the town of Carbonear so it would be nice if we had a water fountain there.”
Councillor Seymour said a fountain was discussed at the last committee meeting, but it was too late to put it in this tender. “Myself, and the director and the CAO talked about it and this will be addressed at our next meeting for following up probably in the future,” he said. “We don’t know when in the future, but I know it will be followed up.”
In related news, the Town has also awarded a contract for the supply and installation of a feeder panel to operate the new ballfield lighting. Oliver Controls and Electrical will do the work for $3,227, HST included.