By Stu Salkeld
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Your West Central Voice
LEADER – The Town of Leader council will apply for asbestos cleanup funds along with another municipality. The resolution was passed at the Nov. 3 regular meeting of council.
In a phone call Nov. 4 with Your West Central Voice newspaper, Town of Leader Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Erin Romanuik related that councillors passed a resolution that the town will support an application from the R.M. of Clinworth to the Government of Saskatchewan for help with a cleanup project.
The grant will involve targeted sectors support funding for asbestos abatement at the former Lemsford Ferry Regional Park, which was permanently closed in 2019.
Romanuik stated the former park is in a reclamation process and asbestos was found in the defunct park; removal is part of that process. It was noted that if successful the grant in question will help pay the costs of hauling the asbestos out of the park.
Readers should note that while the park is permanently closed, the Lemsford Ferry still operates on a seasonal basis.
Councillors also approved an annual gift to the local fire department of Christmas party tickets for each department member and spouse. The CAO stated council does this every year at Christmas as a way of showing gratitude to the fire department.
Romanuik noted firefighters will have a choice this year, as there are two Christmas parties planned in Leader and council made it clear fire department members can choose which of the two parties they want to attend.
The CAO also observed that the town has been meeting regularly with fire department leadership to brainstorm ways to increase recruitment for the department. Romanuik noted there is no membership problem at the fire department but town and department leaders wanted to brainstorm some ideas to recruit new members, including younger people. She noted this work will be ongoing.
Councillors passed third reading of bylaw 07-26, the community standards bylaw, which replaces the previous nuisance abatement bylaw.
The new bylaw was “Introduced to establish and update standards regulating the maintenance of properties and structures within the town.” The CAO stated that the bylaw is very similar to the previous ones with some wording changes and a removal.
Romanuik stated that a specific part of the previous bylaw, noise, was parsed out and approved as its own bylaw as well.
Councillors entered closed session at 7:18 p.m. to discuss legal matters and returned to the public meeting at 7:58 p.m.
Changes: “clean-up” to “cleanup” (CP noun form, headline and body), comma before “which” in the park sentence, “p.m.” added to 7:58, byline set to the full three lines, LEADER dateline added.
Three things I left alone that you should decide on:
The funding program is likely the provincial Targeted Sector Support initiative. If so, it should be capitalized. Stu has it lowercase and plural (“sectors”). Worth a 30-second check with him.
“Introduced to establish...” has a capital I mid-sentence. If that’s copied verbatim from the bylaw, it’s fine. If not, lowercase it.
“Very similar to the previous ones” conflicts with the singular “previous nuisance abatement bylaw” one paragraph up. Probably “previous one.” That’s Stu’s wording, so I didn’t touch it.