As many Westlock residents would know, the story of the Westlock & District Community Hall’s financial woes is an ongoing one.
Back in 2007, the community hall board approached the Town of Westlock for assistance to help with their run-down parking lot, a project they were only able to half cover through government grants.
At other times, the hall has appealed to the Town of Westlock for help with insurance fees or utility bills.
It’s not that the community hall isn’t well-used, but the upkeep of such a large facility is considerable, to say the least. And raising fees presents a potential issue in and of itself; if it is prohibitively expensive to use the hall, then no one does.
At last Tuesday’s hall board AGM, three Westlock Rotary Club members who were in attendance at the behest of the hall board, were elected to positions on the executive.
Naturally, this tale mutated somewhat in the telling, and suddenly the Rotary Club was taking over the hall.
The new board president, Dwight Brown, set the record straight in this week’s edition of the Westlock News. Rotary is in no way to trying to take over the hall, only lend them a helping hand, said Brown.
The status quo wasn’t working, and the community ball board saw that. And since community service is the entire point of the Rotary Club, this is only a natural fit.
After all, the community hall is an important community asset and it would be a great detriment to Westlock if it was lost. Even Rotary would suffer, as that is the venue for their annual dinner theatre fundraiser.
We’re glad to see the Rotary Club stepping up and lending some assistance. Really, we’ve been hoping for something along those lines for years now.
What form that assistance will take — though it will most certainly involve some kind of financial support — remains to be seen, but the Rotary Club’s support is welcome. Let’s hope they can work together to find a solution that works to keep the hall open for years to come.
