Mayor Cal Huntley said what many of us are thinking when he wondered why the province’s Highway 10 project could not be scaled back and the leftover dollars spent on something more pressing.
As the mayor put it last week, city council appreciates the highway revamp, but he believes “a better service may have been done to the community” if some of those dollars had “been put into the pipe in the ground and the roads in the city.”
Coun. Ken Pawlachuk said he would like to see the province “come to us and ask us not what we want [but] what we need.” He added, “We don’t see that.”
Those are good points. If the province came to the people of Flin Flon and asked, “How can we best spend $20-million-plus?”, an overly elaborate and costly resurfacing and reconfiguring of Highway 10 to Bakers Narrows would be hard-pressed to make the top 10.
But back to Coun. Pawlachuk’s point. Why doesn’t the province consult more with council before deciding how to spend admittedly generous amounts of cash for the benefit of our community?
The answer is simple. What the City of Flin Flon needs in a major way is ongoing funding to replace, section by section, the aging, often-failing pipes beneath our roads.
Pipes aren’t a flashy project. Nobody bases their vote on whether their street got a new sewer line. Heck, you can’t even see it once it’s in the ground.
But a massive upgrade of Highway 10? People notice that. And because it’s a provincial highway, there can be no mistaking who is paying for the work.
I’m not saying the Highway 10 project is totally unimportant. I’ve driven by enough ore trucks on that highway to wish it was at least wider, and the absence of a guard rail along certain sections makes my Spidey senses tingle.
But, good lord, has a single soul driven through that mess of blown-up rock, detours and backhoes and declared, “Yes, all of this is completely necessary”?
Speaking of things that may not be completely necessary, Jubilee Residence tenants are relieved that group home care activities have not been removed from the seniors home as previously announced.
The Legion Housing Corporation, which runs the Jubilee, had planned to withdraw from the Northern Health Region’s (NHR’s) group home care program effective Sept. 15, but that day came and went with no changes.
Changes would have removed the Jubilee’s overnight health care aide and cancelled some or all of the NHR’s on-site group activities. They would have also left the NHR unable to prepare meals for residents on site and serve those meals to tenants in the social setting of the communal kitchen area.
As a relative of one tenant told me, the whole plan would make it a lot more difficult “to be old and be at the Jubilee.”
There’s much speculation and little confirmation as to why the Legion Housing Corporation announced these changes only to back away from them.
As The Reminder reported Wednesday, it is also unclear whether the passage of Sept. 15 means the changes are null and void, or simply postponed.
If the public knew what the housing corporation was trying to accomplish – and we don’t, because it has not spoken publicly – then perhaps there could be a more informed conversation about this emotional topic.
One source tells me the corporation is worried about the potential of lawsuits should a tenant be injured as a result of the group home care program.
If that’s true, is there not a better way of dealing with those concerns than terminating a program that is demonstrably important to the Jubilee’s most vulnerable tenants?
I’m no lawyer, but I’ve got to believe the answer is, and indeed must be, yes.
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