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Thursday, February 28, 2019
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Councillors want to be prepared
By John Cairns Staff Reporter
McKitrick School’s journalism club came to the News-Optimist office Tuesday to learn about the making of newspapers. The club is led by counsellor Lisa Zanyk and kindergarten teacher Dawn Lessard and students get together after school and during lunch to report on the school community. Photo by Josh Greschner
Sports
North Stars have chance Page 8
News City talks snow Page 3
Feature
Hometown heroes and a hootenanny Page 20
Learning the trade Staff The future of reporting in the area looks bright. Students from McKitrick School’s journalism club were at the News-Optimist office Tuesday to learn some tricks of the trade. The club is headed by school counsellor Lisa Zanyk and kindergarten teacher Dawn Lessard. Sessions take place after school and during noon hours. Most of the members are Grade 6 students. Students write stories about the various goingson at school and the topics relevant to the wider community, including some Battlefords North Stars
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coverage. At the office, club participants learned about copyediting, one-sentence paragraphs and the technology we use to lay out the newspaper. They toured the building to learn about the other departments within a newspaper organization, such as advertising sales, graphic arts, office management and the collating department, where the papers are prepared for delivery. Lessard said future plans include making copies of a club newspaper, and the News-Optimist could feature students’ writing in future issues.
The City of North Battleford is seeking to raise its debt limit by $10 million. The current debt limit, set in 2010, is $45 million. On Monday, council voted in favour of increasing the debt limit to $55 million. As part of the resolution, council authorized administration to prepare the paperwork to be submitted to the Saskatchewan Municipal Board to seek their approval. Once the SMB gives its stamp of approval the new debt limit will be in place. The reason for the debt limit increase, according to city officials, is the city may need to borrow for major projects in the near future, and there is little room under its current limit. “As we kind of get into the master plan, we’ve identified we’re going to need some additional money here in the not too distant future,” said Director of Finance Steve Brown. The indication is administration wants to be proactive.
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By increasing its debt limit, the City of North Battleford says it will be prepared should it become necessary to borrow for a major upgrade. The city is currently running below its debt limit, but the $4 million buffer wouldn’t be enough for some of the work that may need doing. In particular, the city has several major projects coming up for water, sewer and capital upgrades. The city’s debt runs around $4 million below the current $45 million debt limit, which is not enough to cover all of those. One project that has been on the books for a while, but has yet to go ahead, is enhancing the sewer trunk force main for flood mitigation. The city applied two years ago to Canada Builds for federal funding for that project, at an estimated cost of $15 million. Councillor Greg Lightfoot pointed to other long term projects identified in the budget two years ago, including water treatment as well as Civic Centre replacement. “Being ahead of the game is a good idea,” said Lightfoot, because it “does take time to get this approved by the province and
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by the municipal board, to make sure that we’re eligible to qualify for this.” Mayor Ryan Bater said raising the debt limit also allows the city to get ahead of the game with asset management planning. Raising the debt limit is not a new discussion at City Hall. It came up during 2017 budget deliberations, when then-City Manager Jim Puffalt pointed to the sewer force main project, downtown redevelopment and the long-delayed City Hall renovations as projects that couldn’t be put off. “We have to do something,” said Puffalt. He added if they were going to raise the debt limit, it was better to do it one time because it was “not something the City should do lightly.” If ultimately approved by the SMB, its does not mean the city will run up Continued on Page 2
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