A recommendation from the South Cariboo Joint Committee to remove an Aquatic Centre for 100 Mile House from consideration as part of any future referendum was endorsed recently by the CRD’s Board.
With significant increases in construction costs, interest rates, and cost of living, the Joint Committee determined that building and operating an Aquatic Centre is not financially feasible.
“When we look at the other pools within the Cariboo like in Quesnel and Williams Lake, the cost of operating them, not accounting for the financing or saving for any future capital upgrade, is about one and a half million dollars a year.” Cariboo Regional District Board Chair Margo Wagner said, “That is equal to the budget for the District of 100 Mile House Public Works and Community Services Department.”
Wagner said Regionally they need to continue to look at options to improve recreations that are more financially feasible and that they are still going to look at expanding the recreational boundary.
“What we need to do is re-assess and look at other recreational opportunities. A pool is the most expensive thing to build and extremely expensive to maintain, and they don’t have a long lifespan. If you get 25 years out of a pool, without doing major millions and millions of dollars upgrades you’re doing pretty good. I think there are better places where we can look at doing some recreation expansion within the South Cariboo and doing a good job of maintaining and diversifying the services we already offer in recreation and arts,” Wagner added.
The Cariboo Regional District said while discussions will continue around the subject of a future recreation referendum for the South Cariboo, the options that may be presented going forward will not include any consideration of an Aquatic Centre.