Municipality of Blanc-Sablon issues statement about recent public meeting regarding the local arena9/29/2022
 LOCAL NEWS – September 29, 2022
CFBS was speaking today with Karine Benoit, Acting General Director, regarding the meeting that had taken place on September 26th with the Corporation de Développement Économique Est-Ouest board about the current situation regarding funding, administration, and the logistics of operating the local arena in Lourdes de Blanc-Sablon. As you may recall, CFBS was in attendance and reported that many community members attended as it was open to the public. At the closing of the meeting, there was still no solution yet made by both parties, but an agreement to hold another meeting later in October to find a solution has been made. The Municpality of Blanc-Sablon would like to issue the following statement regarding the meeting on September 26th: "The municipality of Blanc-Sablon had a meeting with the Corporation de développement Économique Est-Ouest, where the public was also present on the 26th of September. The municipality presented their plan to change the way that the yearly $60,000.00 grant was given. At this time, the Corporation and the public voiced their concerns on this plan. The municipality took all opinions and concerns into consideration, and are pleased that we will be having another meeting with the corporation in late October. One of the objectives for the Municipality at this meeting was to create a better working relationship and communication between the two parties. We feel that this was achieved, and we will continue to work on this relationship in the future." CFBS will attend the next meeting in October and bring you an update on discussions between the Municipality of Blanc-Sablon and the Corporation de Développement Économique Est-Ouest board for the funding and requirements needed for the local arena in Lourdes de Blanc-Sablon to continue to receive this yearly grant. Abbygail Wellman CFBS Journalist LOCAL NEWS – September 28, 2022 CFBS was speaking today with Carla Fequet, President of the board of the Corporation de Développement Économique Est-Ouest board, regarding the meeting that had taken place on September 26th with the Municipality of Blanc-Sablon about the current situation regarding funding, administration, and the logistics of operating the local arena in Lourdes de Blanc-Sablon. Many community members attended as it was open to the public, but at the closing of the meeting there was still no solution yet made by both parties, but an agreement made to hold another meeting to take place at a future date. Board President, Carla Fequet, has mentioned 3 points that their organization hopes in going forward that the Municipality would reconsider to solve the issue: 1. Seeing as we are forced to do a yearly audit costing us well over 7 thousand dollars, then we would like for them to replace quarterly reports with quarterly meetings between the arena board and the council. 2. Keep in place certain donations such as high school SEC V bursary from the Arena. We consider this a very small investment and token of appreciation to our youth that is important for our board. Therefore, we would like that to be accepted in their no donation clause. 3. Seeing as our expenses keep increasing with the cost of living, that they try to apply for funding as a municipality to not only benefit the arena, but the leisure and social activities as well. The overall outcome we want, Carla says, is a better working relationship with the council. “We would appreciate some trust and less criticism. More public meetings, etc. It is crucial that we keep the building open and have it made more accessible for all generations” she noted. I asked Carla if she could explain the issue around giving donations, she said: “We receive donations, but the Corporation itself, gives a bursary to a SEC V graduating student. It's been done ever since the arena opened. They (Municipality) asked for that to stop. So we understand it's something incredibly small, but we feel like that shows appreciation to our youth.” She also wanted to add; “In 2021 we had twelve employees work for our center. Considering how small our community is, that is a lot of people with jobs that invest back into their municipality. If we keep getting less funding, more expense, its going to have an impact on more that just the arena. We were disappointed that the full council did not show up for the meeting, as we were expecting. Therefore, no decision could be made. Which was a little bit disappointing. But I still think we managed to get some points across from both sides. We had a good public turn out too and we want to thank the people for being there. On another note, as of today we are looking for a new arena manager, and there is a seat available on our board, as someone on the board resigned yesterday” she said. Information for the job posting can be found here, you can follow the Facebook page of the Comité Des Loisirs Blanc-Sablon for more information. CFBS also reached out to the Municipality of Blanc-Sablon for comment, more info to come... Abbygail Wellman CFBS Journalist |
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