The City of Yorkton is giving additional support to the Canadian Student Leadership Conference in 2020.
Co-chairs Mike Haczkewicz and Johnna McBride made a presentation to council outlining plans for the event and where they could see the city lending their support to the event. Last year, the city had already agreed to waive the fees associated with criminal record checks for billets.
This time, the organizers were in front of council to ask for fees for the use of city facilities to be waived. The conference will make extensive use of city facilities, including the Flexihall and Curling Rink for a trade show and a banquet, the Agripavillion for a barn dance, the Prairie Oyster bar for an advisor social, the Industrial building for a meal, the swimming pool for a family night, the city campground to host an MGI Experiential Learning event.
The total bill for the use of the Gallagher Centre over this week would have been $28,670.
They also requested that the city help them ‘paint the town orange’ through their flower planting program. Unlike in most years, in 2020 the majority of the flowers in the city will be orange, to match the colours of the conference.
Darcy McLeod, director of Community Development Parks and Recreation said that their plan for flowers would not actually be an additional cost for the city, it would just influence the flowers selected for the year’s planting program, which would be happening anyway.
However, the CSLC will be giving back as well, through legacy projects in the city’s green spaces. They plan on having students plant 250 trees on Logan Green, and will work with the city for that legacy project. They also intend on doing rehabilitation and improvements to the Ravine Ecological Preserve, using wood chips on the paths and doing landscaping to make it more usable for people in the city. There are also plans to clean headstones at the Yorkton City Cemetary. Advisors will work to restock the Logan Green fish pond.
Councillor Aaron Kienle was especially excited about the planned legacy project in Logan Green, saying that he has wanted to see work happen in that area for a long time.
One question that the CSLC co-chairs had will have to have additional work done to see if it’s possible. They would like to see if the YRHS signature cowboy hats could be hung from the light standards for the duration of the conference. The city promised to look into the problem, and councillor Ken Chyz suggested that if the cowboy hats could not be hung from the light standards successfully, an alternate solution would be to put banners up with a cowboy hat graphic.
Council was unanimous in approving the CSLC’s requests, and the fees for the use of city facilities will be waived.
