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Housing, regional heliport and landfill headline Town of Nipawin focus for 2023

Jan 9, 2023 | 3:18 PM

The Town of Nipawin is building off its 2022 year, as we move into 2023.

Administrators at the Town have some main focuses at the top of its mind, as administrators plan out the next 12 months.

According to Mayor Rennie Harper, housing is one of the biggest concerns this year as “it’s really difficult to find housing, both rental and to purchase for young professional people that want to come here.”

With that in mind, Nipawin is set to complete a comprehensive housing needs assessment, so administrators can start to engage some investors, as well as hire a firm to help with economic development.

“We do have relatively homeless people. [It] doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily sleeping outside, but they are couch surfing, they are outside much of the day, we do need to find some opportunity to do something with that,” Harper said.

The Town has been working together with a group they call ‘inter-agency communication committee’, which is a group of roughly 25 agencies and retailers that are working together on finding mental health services and homeless shelters in the community.

Harper added budgeting will be one of the issues and will be difficult when it comes to this problem.

Meanwhile, Nipawin has also now assumed responsibility for the waste diversion center.

It will continue to be a regional landfill, however, it is now operated by the Town.

That might not last for long though, as they had previously taken on the project of decommissioning the landfill, as it was built back in 1973 and there are many cells under it.

Harper explained the province is expecting that landfills will be properly decommissioned, sometime between June and October of this year, through the assistance of ICIP funding.

And finally, Nipawin, along with eight other municipalities, are hopeful to begin construction on a regional heliport by the end of the year.

The Twin Lakes district planning commission is a group of nine municipalities that work together on district planning.

All the plans and approval are in place/finalized, so now funds need to be raised before a “shovel can be stuck in the ground.”

Other upcoming projects include constructing three electric vehicle charging stations, as well as continuing work on the Jubilee arena.

In 2022 the town’s highlights included a new sidewalk along Highway 35 to enhance the safety of pedestrians, winning four blooms in the Communities in Bloom events, and receiving grants for the EV stations and dressing/bathroom improvements for the previously mentioned projects coming up.

Ben.Tompkins@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter @BenTompkins_8

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