King delighted Holyrood is pursuing new community centre
By Craig Westcott/December 20, 2023
When Holyrood adopted its 2024 budget last week it contained a Christmas present of sorts for longtime councillor Sadie King.
The gift came in the form of an application the Town is making to the Province to share in the cost of obtaining a detailed design and cost estimate for a multi-purpose community centre.
The Town estimates the cost of the study at $100,000. It’s offering to come up with its portion by scraping together unused monies left from this past year’s capital works projects.
“This one brings me great joy,” King admitted, before reading the motion to apply for the Province’s blessing and financial help. “This project aims to provide a plausible design for a building where residents can gather to attend or host events, participate in programming, and engage in mentoring or training sessions including physical activity programs, socialize and exchange stories and skill sets.”
King’s motion was seconded by Deputy Mayor Michelle Woodford.
“I’ve been hoping to see a building before I leave council,” said King, 77. “And now that it’s becoming reality, I can’t express this evening how I feel.”
Councillor Laura Crawley joked she couldn’t put into words how happy she was either that her committee was able to find the Town’s share of the funds from the 2023 budget.
“It’s something we really need,” King said. “We don’t have any place in Holyrood for anything, really.”
Mayor Gary Goobie said everyone on council is on the same page.
“We’ve heard from our residents, and it’s identified in our strategic plan,” he said. “Our CAO (Marjorie Gibbons) brilliantly has her way of going back over old projects that have been closed out to see if there’s any excess funding, projects that came in under budget. And she’s been very successful at that, and we’ve come up with over $100,000 through different projects in the past closed out, but there were remaining funds… This is how we’ve been able to do this. Discussions have been taking place on securing the remaining funding and how that can be done in a manner that will have minimal effect on our taxpayers. That’s not promised 100 per cent, but we feel confident that we can secure funding through other means that will avoid it having to become a budgetary item.”
Goobie said the Town needs the concept plan and cost estimate to apply for funding to build the centre.
King’s motion passed unanimously, aside from councillor Steve Windsor being absent from the meeting.