If you’re feeling a little left in the dark about what’s happening with the new school, you’re not alone.
On May 7, Brian LeMessurier, superintendent for Aspen View School Division, and Aspen View board chair Paul Ponich appeared before Athabasca town council in response to a letter from council requesting further information on the project and to discuss issues.
“We don’t have a lot of new information, which is leading to speculation,” LeMessurier said.
LeMessurier explained there has not been much new information from the province in the past four to six weeks. This is also the reason no public meetings have been held to date to discuss the school and its location.
“We don’t really want to hold any public meetings until we have something firm to present,” Ponich said.
That information cannot be firmed up until Alberta Education and Alberta Infrastructure give the go-ahead for the school and the pool project to be completed as one, something they have resisted.
“The province has come back, and basically they don’t want to have anything to do with the pool project,” said Ryan Maier, Town of Athabasca chief administrative officer.
However, the new school steering committee is in agreement that the projects should be completed together and are pushing that to the province.
“We see the greatest opportunity for this community with a joint school and pool project,” LeMessurier said.
Among the town’s concerns raised with Aspen View was poor communication between the parties.
“It is important that stakeholders are updated on a regular basis … whenever new information is presented,” LeMessurier told council.
Mayor Roger Morrill felt the response from Aspen View would definitely make things easier moving forward.
“I think with what superintendent LeMessurier said, going forward, I think it’s going to open a lot of doors if we can keep communication open,” he said.
Also of concern to the town is the cost of constructing or upgrading services to the school site. It’s a cost for which the town will ultimately be on the hook, but town council would like to discuss the matter with the entire steering committee.
“I do think the partners have to get together very soon to discuss the issue of site servicing,” said councillor Tim Verhaeghe, who explained he felt slightly misled at the start of the process concerning servicing.
The province has informed Aspen View that unless the land is serviced soon, the project cannot move forward.
Morrill is hopeful that the partners will work together to find a solution to the issue.
“We firmly believe our partners will come on our side,” he said. “We want to work as a partnership to make this happen.”
Town council has also approved a backup location in the event that the school cannot be built near the Athabasca Regional Multiplex. The motion put forward by Morrill at the May 6 council meeting states, “In the unlikely event that construction of Aspen View’s new 7–-12 school cannot proceed adjacent to the Regional Multiplex site, the Town of Athabasca offers Aspen View up to 12 acres as necessary of community lands, previously known as Jubilee Park, at no cost to them.”
Jubilee Park includes land where the old curling rink used to be near Edwin Parr Composite.
Morrill explained his thinking behind the motion in a later interview.
“It’s land that the Town of Athabasca owns, number one, and it’s land directly adjacent to the current Edwin Parr school, number two, and number three, it’s already serviced,” he said.
At last Wednesday’s meeting, LeMessurier acknowledged the town’s choice of an “if all else fails” location and said if it did came to that, Aspen View would have to pitch that location to the province and see if it was still willing to fund the project.
The Aspen View representatives and town council agreed that a meeting with all members of the steering committee must happen soon, but no date has yet been set.
