By Katie Ryan
The news coming out of Alberta indicates that some progress is being made in the new Dr. Cooke Extended Care Facility development.
Mayor Jeff Mulligan said earlier this month that the city has received verbal confirmation from local MLA and president of the Alberta Treasury Board Lloyd Snelgrove that the funds are in place to purchase land for the new centre.
“Minister Snelgrove has said that the $2.5 million to purchase the land for the Dr. Cooke Extended Care Centre in the west of town, by the new Lakeshore development, is proceeding,” said Mulligan. “I did get a phone call and they pulled me out of a meeting, he did say that work was underway.”
While the verbal confirmation is a sign of progress, the city has yet to receive a cheque to complete the sale. Mulligan attributed the slow pace of the project to the recession and Premier Ed Stelmach’s cabinet shuffle.
“There is no question that the economic downturn, cabinet reorganizations, provincial government’s focussed on so many things happening at one time, it certainly impacted the efficacy of the project,” he said. “There was nothing done to us that hasn’t impacted other municipalities and politicians and ministries just because of the unforeseen economic circumstance.”
Updating codes
The city has prepared a bylaw to update their building codes, as the last time Lloydminster adopted a National Building Code was in 1974.
While city officials have made updates to the code over the years during city council, officials adopted the National Building Code of Canada 2005.
“When you adopt a national building code our council has the statutory authority to adopt all of it or part of it and it allows it to be uniform on both sides of the city,” said senior director of corporate affairs, Tom Lysyk, adding that many other urban municipalities take on provincial variations within the code and pass their own uniform building standards.
“What they are simply doing is fixing a point in time saying these are the rules and the Saskatchewan side is the same as the Alberta side.
“We are a little different, it just allows us to do that same seamless approach and fixing it in 2005 time is a bit of an update, it makes it work in Lloydminster.”
Pest control
City officials were recently reminded by Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development to appoint inspectors to carry out the obligations laid forth in the Agricultural Pests Act.
The Act applies to all of Lloydminster, while the Pest Control Act of Saskatchewan does not apply to any part of the city.
Taking care of pests in the city are John Argue and Dennis Nystevold, who were appointed at the last city council meeting, for the year 2010.
The inspectors will have two functions: they shall ensure that all city lands and properties are free from pests and respond to complaints, work with provincial inspectors and enforce the Act where necessary.
The most common activity is the detection and removal of the Norway Rat, which is a common problem for the province along their territorial boundaries and is a declared species considered to be a pest.