The North Cariboo Joint Advisory Committee has agreed to go back to the public for input on a potential pool renovation project at the Quesnel Rec Centre.
The committee voted unanimously last (Tuesday) night to do it through at least a couple of town hall meetings and on-line.
Mary Sjostrom, the CRD Director for Area A, suggested some other ideas as well in order to get as much feedback as possible.
“I mentioned businesses, because in the past when we did the Multi-Centre and the arena, we used stationary boards that were placed in other places other than the arena. We used a downtown site, South Quesnel, West Quesnel. All I’m trying to do is every avenue possible for folks that aren’t on social media. I think it’s important when you’re talking about a big project like this with lots of money.”
It was also agreed that other websites would all be funnelled to the “Let’s Connect Quesnel” on-line engagement tool on the city’s website, something Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson felt was important.
“That allows us to tell the same story to everybody, gives us flexibility in how that story gets told, and then collects the data based on people actually having gone through the information. And then it will collate and give us that data in a way that is meaningful for us to understand what it’s saying. So we’ll push everybody to that one format, but we’ll use multiple channels to get out there.”
Simpson says there was a lot of disinformation and misinformation about the referendum that failed back in June.
“Quite frankly some people were being quite deliberate about misinforming the public about what was happening because of the way we have to frame the question.  You can’t just ask the question do you want to upgrade the pool ? You have to ask the question do you want to raise your taxes by x amount and so on, and some individuals used that as an opportunity to distort what was going on.”
The consultation is scheduled to take place between May 2nd and June 24th.
The cost, which was also approved last night, is expected to be around 35 thousand dollars.
It will be up to the next Joint Committee to decide what to do with the information that’s gathered, as this Committee has already agreed not to hold another referendum on the pool project until April of 2023, after the upcoming municipal election.