Rocanville mayor says town considering airport support
February 26, 2024, 10:24 am
Kara Kinna
Rocanville mayor Ron Reed says that the town of Rocanville is planning to support the Moosomin airport expansion, but will be holding off on their commitment until some things are finalized with the town’s aquatic centre upgrade project first.
“We are definitely looking to commit,” said Reed last week. “We are hoping to hold off on our commitment until later on in the year. We’ve got some GICs and some money set aside that we have talked about earmarking for that project. But we really want to see where we are at with our pool refurb as well.
“So yes we are going to be committing. We don’t want to commit to a dollar amount right now, so we haven’t announced anything yet.
“We did send a letter of support to the airport committee late last year after they had their update saying they are still looking for funding. But we didn’t really want to commit to a number or a time frame.
“We’re gong to earmark something in the budget but that will be flexible depending where we are at with some of the other projects we have on the go.
“Hopefully we have some more concrete information (about the pool upgrade) at our town meeting on Monday. We do have some finalized apples-to-apples comparisons with our last two RFP bids. Our last RFP we did get three different options and it was hard to compare apples to apples. So we presented the same option to all three and said this is what we want, now what is your price. We are going to be reviewing that as a pool committee and we will hopefully have some news by Monday at the town public meeting.
“If we have updates, we will definitely present them.”
There has been a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to expand the airport with a new 5,000-foot runway to accommodate the Saskatchewan Air Ambulance, as well as commercial interests.
The new runway will be the third longest in the province, after Saskatoon and Regina.
So far, $6,456,111.57 has been spent on the project, but the total cost including paving, lights, and navigation will be $10,589,058.64.
Nutrien and the provincial government have each contributed about 25 per cent of the total cost.
Municipalities have been asked to contribute a $350 per capita commitment.
Most municipalities have met the $350 per capita requested, and most of the municipal portion of the funding is in place.
The town of Rocanville has contributed $60,000 to the project. To meet the $350 per capita requirement, the town would have to contribute an additional $251,150
