The future of the Westlock and District Seniors and Disabled bus service is becoming clearer.
But the picture coming into focus is anything but rosy. With the town sticking to its planned June 30 shutdown of the service, drivers have started to receive notice that their services will soon no longer be required.
Now, we can’t fault the town for sending out those notices — it has set a timeline to end the service, and it must comply with employment laws when notifying its employees of changes in their employment status.
What we can find fault with is the fact the service is slated to be kiboshed in less than a month and we still have not seen a solid proposal from the Westlock and District Community Transportation Committee to keep the bus running in some form or another.
That committee was formed earlier this year in response to news the bus service was being axed.
Its tasks included looking for ways to keep the bus running through investigating what other municipalities have done with their own similar services. It also sent out a survey looking for information on just how well-used the bus is, in order to determine what form the service could take moving forward so that it benefits as many people as possible.
There had been talk the committee would make a presentation to town council at the May 27 meeting, but that never happened. The word is a presentation could be forthcoming at the June 10 meeting.
But even if the committee presents a strong, viable solution, will that leave enough time to have that solution implemented and prevent any interruption of service? We don’t know.
However, that should be a secondary concern. After all, what good is knowing if service will be uninterrupted when we don’t know whether there is a new service coming in the first place?
For now, it’s a “hurry up and wait” situation.
The town has made its move, sticking to its plans despite outrage from many segments of the community. It’s up to the committee, or any other community group, to come forward with a plan to keep the bus running. If Westlock is to continue to have a bus service beyond the end of June, it’s just about now-or-never to make that happen.
