Context:
In the last few years, the District has initiated an unprecedented period of investment in new facilities for Squamish. It began with the replacement of our two fire halls and it’s continuing with our Public Works facility, our third most critical facility, with committed funding in the Financial Plan. We also need a new municipal hall, as the current facility is at end-of-life and unable to accommodate the future – even current – needs of the organization.
We acknowledge that many members of the community are wishing for new recreation facilities to be prioritized. We can assure you that work to upgrade recreation facilities is important and is being worked on.
With new recreation facilities costing +/- $100 million, this is no easy task for a community of our size, given the many competing priorities.
This five-year financial plan includes a number of large projects that will help us move towards an upgraded Brennan Park Recreation Centre. This is being funded in stages as federal and provincial grants become available.
We are also planning for a second pool and a second ice rink (see years 2027 and 2028 of the Five-Year Financial Plan).
Renovating the existing facility versus rebuilding is the way the District has chosen to move forward. There are various reasons for this: availability of municipal-owned land; the ability to upgrade in phases as funding is available versus having to fund/finance $100M all at one time; the ability to keep the recreation centre operational during construction of the phases; and the environmental impacts from reduced GHG emissions of renovating versus demolishing and rebuilding.
Squamish has many competing priorities and we are working to balance all the needs of the community – this includes upgrading facilities, replacing (beyond) end-of-life infrastructure, adding new infrastructure to meet growth, mitigating against the impacts of climate change, investing in transit, working to improve housing affordability, ensuring livability, and expanding operations and services to meet the growing needs of the community (and the list goes on).
We encourage you to browse through our Openbook visualization tool to learn more about the many planned initiatives as we work on the priorities, challenges and trade-offs of the coming years.
Question: Given the options and constraints, what recommendations or thoughts for the next five years would you like to share with us?
