A former city councillor has recruited some backup in his ongoing efforts to save the Meadow Lake Civic Centre. During the regular meeting of Meadow Lake city council held Monday (Sept. 9), correspondence from Richard Levesque concerning the civic centre was received while administration was instructed to formally respond to Levesque’s letter in writing. This is the second time Levesque – a former city councillor himself and long-time administrator – has written to council about the fate of the civic centre, and this time his letter was accompanied by a petition featuring the signatures of 225 like-minded Meadow Lake and area residents.
“Previously, council had discussed the future fate of the civic centre and had also mentioned a petition,” Levesque noted in his letter. “Attached is a petition concerning the building. I realize the petition has no legal status and is non-binding on council. Since using Survey Monkey or a petition is not the most accurate way to determine general support for something, I do hope council considers having a separate ballot during the upcoming general election posing the same or similar question. I also understand usually the number of eligible voters actually participating in a general election is by no means the majority, but this would at least give a reasonable gauge as to whether a significant number of city residents support keeping the facility or not.”
The 2024 municipal election is scheduled for this fall. Meanwhile, in her official recommendation to council, city clerk Kaila Lefort confirmed no decision on the fate of the civic centre has been established as of yet.
“Administration received a letter addressed to mayor and council from Richard Levesque concerning the fate of the civic centre and it was accompanied by a ‘petition’ of 225 signatures,” Lefort stated in her report to council. “Under The Cities Act, this correspondence is not classified as a petition and this report will explain why… Under Section 106(2) of The Cities Act, only voters of the city are eligible to be petitioners. On this basis, I have excluded any entries which clearly indicate the petitioner lives anywhere other than the City of Meadow Lake. This resulted in 118 signatures being invalid within the document. Additionally, a majority of the signatures indicated they were a city resident but only listed incomplete addresses. Although technically incomplete, if we still counted these signatures as valid per their indications, we would have a grand total of 107 signatures.
According to the most recent census data from 2021, Meadow Lake’s population is sitting at 5,322. The minimum number of signatures required, according to The Cities Act is 532, which is 10 per cent of the total population. The document fell short by 425 signatures.” In spite of this, during Monday’s meeting, councillor Marty Bishop said it is nice to see so many people become involved by expressing their concern about the future of the civic centre. Mayor Merlin Seymour agreed, but also reiterated Lefort’s point about the need to still make a decision on the issue.
“We haven’t decided what we’re doing with it yet,” Seymour told Levesque, the latter of whom was in attendance for the meeting. “We do appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Whether it’s coffee shop talk or whatever the case may be, at this point we don’t know anything. We don’t know what we’re doing with it, and, moving forward, if we do decide to keep it, we would have to get some factual costs involved in repairing the roof. As you are aware, we put about $60,000 into the roof about five years ago to keep it from leaking. At that time, I believe the cost estimate to bring the roof up to standard was about $1.2 million.”
In his original letter to council dated May 3, Levesque said the civic centre is still put to good use, has held a lot of major functions and costs the city very little to operate. “There have been reports about the condition of the roof and the cost to repair it, but other than some occasional leaks in the centre of the roof which is a separate section, I feel the building is in relatively good condition and could be possibly leased out to someone interested in operating and properly maintaining the structure,” he wrote. “Even if it lasts just a few more years, it would still be more economical than a demolition, especially since there is a bomb shelter in the basement. It could still generate some revenue and it would just be an extra facility that could be used when there are multiple events on the same weekend.”