The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Health and safety concerns will soon mean new roofs for three municipal facilities, taking a big bite out of the city's capital budget. Starting as early as this weekend, contractors will begin replacing the roofs at the R.H. Channing Auditorium, Flin Flon RCMP detachment and Flin Flon Public Library. 'We're not putting new roofs on places that don't need them,' Mayor George Fontaine said at last week's city council meeting. The estimated cost of the work, along with some minor roof repairs at City Hall already completed, comes in at $350,000. The money will be drawn from the city's 2013 budget, which has not yet been completed. That limits other capital projects the city will be able to take on this year, but the work is what Coun. Bill Hanson termed 'urgent.' At the R.H. Channing Auditorium, a leaky roof caused pieces of ceiling tile to come crashing down last month. Chief Administrative Officer Mark Kolt said workers rotated other tiles into the damaged areas, but the following week the new tiles also began falling. 'So it's not a preventative measure, it is forced on us by circumstances,' he said. The leaky roof at the nearby RCMP station was a factor behind a two-month building evacuation that ended in early 2013. 'We agreed that as soon as we could get (those repairs) done, we would,' said Mayor Fontaine. 'Otherwise we wouldn't have police in there, so I'd say it's pretty urgent.' Staff and patrons at the library, meanwhile, have long endured leakage from the aging roof above them. Coun. Hanson said the three new roofs will be engineered so that the water slopes properly toward the drains. He said the city will also realize greater efficiencies since the roofs will be better at trapping heat.
