There were many surprises last week when St. Albert city council finally showed its hand when it came to its commitments and priorities for city facilities.
In one fell swoop city council cancelled plans for an MOU with a gymnastics organization wanting a facility, sent a group looking for a multi-sport campus packing in search of another piece of land, announced a commitment to a less than expected increase in aquatic space, and announced it would search for leased space for a small expansion of library services.
At the same time the city announced that soccer space was the number one priority in the city for space – something that did not appear to be on city radar during the plebiscite last fall when the city asked voters to rate their commitment to an arena, pool or library space. The plebiscite rated pool space as the top need, followed by arena and library space. (There was no mention of soccer at the time.) Last week, city council ranked indoor ice second, aquatic space third, food bank fourth, library space fifth and gymnastics in sixth.
Now are these decisions in the best interest of taxpayers? We may never know. It is disturbing that many of the city council conversations with regard to how those rankings came to be were held behind closed doors earlier this year.
On the surface, at least, it would appear St. Albert Soccer Association (SASA) came out the winner last week. Its Field of Dreams project was the first to lay claim to the land adjacent to St. Albert’s southwest corner, also coveted by Active Communities. The cities of St. Albert and Edmonton signed an MOU with SASA more than a year ago. It remains unclear what the status of that project is, since neither the organization, nor the city have divulged this.
Active Communities Alberta, which had wanted to build on that same land and also has worked to gain Edmonton support for a shared multi-sport campus, has been told it can have council support for such a project – only if it is on land in St. Albert, preferably in the north end, presumably ruling out the Field of Dreams land.
We do not know at this time whether the two proposals could be combined. It’s possible there simply would not be the space on the preferred location to accommodate both. We might safely assume, however, that if the two groups could find a way to work together their combined voice would carry a great deal more weight with both St. Albert and Edmonton councils. Their chances of securing funding from the two senior levels of government also would be greatly enhanced.
The city has put a lot on its plate. Clearly it can't afford to build everything that is being asked of it. But given these two competing interests, and Edmonton’s need for more facilities, everyone could score a win if city council could facilitate a joint project.
