Mayor of Rocanville looks back on 2022
January 4, 2023, 3:01 pm
Sierra D'Souza Butts, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Mayor of Rocanville Ron Reed reflects on this past year and speaks about the town’s accomplishments, its challenges and what members of the community can look forward to in the upcoming years.
What were some of the highlights for the town this year?
We started off with spring flooding which is never good. There were lots of issues with our lift station, but with the help of some local contractors we were able to get through that.
It was the first year for our retention pond, it’s still not quite done, but it’s a work in progress. It’s working great by collecting water which is good to see.
For the indoor swimming pool, the referendum was approved. It’s nice to see that project moving forward.
We had a fair amount of water breaks for the inexperienced crew, but we’re working through that as well. There was a fair amount of turnover, but we have a good group of Public Works employees with us now.
The retention pond and pool were probably the biggest highlights for us this year.
The outdoor rink is still a work in progress which we plan to finish this year. We plan to get some extra lighting out there, as well as install power for our little shack so it can be warmed up. The outdoor rink was a new addition last year, but we’re still adding to it.
The curling rink being available to the town was another thing that happened in 2022. The old curling club were owners of the building and they handed it back to the town.
We’re making a lot of use of that building by using it as an extra recreation facility. They have meetings there, pickle ball, karate, and more activities going on. It’s nice to have an extra facility that we can make use of in town.
What were some of the challenges the town faced this year?
The issues with the lift station was probably one of the biggest ones, in terms of it being a fair cost to the town.
We obviously weren’t expecting that at the start of the year.
Things like that really hurt the budget numbers and final numbers but, I think in past years we have been putting money aside for infrastructure reserves, which does help in having money to fall back on for emergency use like that.
Another challenge was us being a fairly new council. We’re in our second year, but everyone is still sort of getting their feet wet and figuring out exactly what they should be doing, and what they can be doing differently or better, as well, just knowing that their voice counts at those council meetings.
Was there anything council did not succeed in this year that you’re hoping to accomplish in 2023?
Moving ahead with the pool demo and refurbishment. I think there were a lot of people who were hoping to see more action on that after the referendum vote went through.
With the timing on how everything went with the tenders and the bids that came back, we really thought it was best to take a step back and take a better look at what we were actually going to do with the project. We wanted to come up with a better game plan before moving forward with any work being done towards it.
We have set up a sub-committee to work through that. Steve has been a great help there. We needed someone who was able to commit a fair amount of time to a project and he’s been excellent to work with on that.
How does this year compare to last year?
I think in some ways this year was better and in some ways it was worse.
There were a lot of things not really within our control, but we dealt with it as it came up and as best as we could.
There were other things that we had envisioned in the years before that were developing last year or years prior to that, those projects were starting to come to fruition this year.
We started to see the end result from those projects which was really nice.
Five to ten years from now, what do you expect for the Town of Rocanville?
You mean the city of Rocanville.
We want to grow. The town needs to grow to succeed. I think some of the projects and work we’re doing for the future and now are going to be more of a draw for people.
The way we do our property taxes should be a draw to businesses, residents, and more people for potentially wanting to move to town. We hope that people see that as a benefit.
Having facilities like our recreation centre and indoor pool is a draw for some of these families, communities and businesses that may want to relocate.
We just expect growth and more growth. We’ve got a great group of people, council, Public Works, administration. We’re excited for the upcoming year.
