By Thomas Smith

On Thursday, Sept. 25, Minden Hills Council discussed accepting Garbutt Disposal’s bid for demolishing the Lochlin Community Centre.

“I am wondering if it should be left as it is for now and left as part of the building process,” asked Deputy Mayor Lisa Schell.

One option could be that the building is left standing and renovated to meet the needs of the community.

“I have always been in favour of keeping this building and maybe trying to restore it someday,” said Councillor Bob Sisson.

Councillor Tammy Mckelvey asked whether they could accept the bid, but only authorize the work when a new build is accepted by council.

“I am not prepared to accept a tender to demolish the building if we are not going to be rebuilding,” said McKelvey.

“Council would have to approve any build here,” said Mayor Bob Carter.

Carter said that he supports what Schell brought up. As long as the building is standing but closed and is not a danger to anybody, they can determine what will happen in regards to a rebuild and put the project together.

“We might not see it in the 2026 budget,” reminded Schell.

“Ceretainly we would have to have a community centre building there. In my mind that is not a negotiable issue,” said Councillor Pam Sayne.

Councillor Ivan Ingram brought up the discrepancy with council’s request for both tenders for the demolition and a pre-fabricated building.

CAO Cynthia Fletcher said that it seems there was a misunderstanding of the staff member in charge of requesting them.

Sayne asked Fletcher how long it would be until this topic comes back to council. Later, council acknowledged that they have been seeking tenders, but never plan on accepting them without a clear plan for the community centre.

“The dilemma with putting a tender out is that it is signalling an intention to do something,” said Fletcher.

“We really need to say we are committed to this hall or quit issuing tenders and wasting staff time, absolutely infuriating members of our community,” said McKelvey.

“On June 12, we did decide as a council that we were ready to commit to this,” said Schell.

“I think we should probably carry through.”

“Why didn’t it happen number one, because it says right here it was to happen, Mayor,” said Ingram. “That’s a problem because when we ask somebody to do something, we expect it to be done.”

“This is your budget under the strong mayor’s act,” said McKelvey. “If you don’t support this we just need to stop wasting everyone else’s time.”

“We can issue the tender for it this afternoon,” said Carter. “Obviously if the number comes in so the total is over the $500,000 whatever the number is, then we have to review it.”

Fletcher said that there are two choices; either they reward the tender bid winner right away or to tie it to the new build.

“You can veto right now,” said McKelvey

“It comes down to the $900,000. Is that what we can afford,” said Carter.

“Well, we shouldn’t have put out a tender to demolish then,” said McKelvey. “That’s disgraceful.”

“I think it may be best to differ for now,” said Clerk Vicki Bull. “It would give staff an opportunity to seek a bit more legal advice and then we will bring this back to the table.”

Councillor Sisson said that he would like to have the topic differed until the end of October when they receive the new price.

Council decided to differed their decision to a future council meeting.

On Friday, Sept. 26, recipients of Minden Hills’ newsletter were excited to see that Minden Hills was looking at demolishing the pre-existing Lochlin Community Centre and replacing it with a pre-fabricated building. This is not the case as council still cannot fully agree on the next steps for the Lochlin Community Centre.