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Hands Off
Jordan Smith of the Highwood/Foothills Composite rugby team fends off a would-be West Island College tackler during Holy Trinity Academy's sevens rugby tournament on Saturday in Okotoks.
- photo by John Barlow
Three left critical after highway crash
By
Staff reporter
Three people sustained serious injuries following a late night crash on Highway 2A in the midst of a blinding snowstorm May 7.
At approximately 10 pm a northbound vehicle driven by a 17-year-old Okotoks resident t-boned a southbound car with three family members from Calgary and a pastor from Medicine Hat.
The vehicle was struck on the passenger side while attempting to turn right into DeWinton.
The two vehicles splayed across the highway forcing a 45-minute road closure while emergency personnel attempted to extricate passengers from the southbound vehicle.
'They had to use the jaws- of-life to pry open the passenger side,' explained Cst. Mario Maillet of the Okotoks RCMP.
A father, mother and son aged 68, 66 and 33 were transported to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, where they remained in the Intensive Care Unit.
The woman underwent surgery to repair a broken arm and leg. Her son also required surgery to repair facial injuries to his mouth and nose. The 68-year-old driver sustained injuries to his ribs. The pastor was released from hospital with no injuries.
The 17-year-old Okotokian was also released from hospital late Wednesday night.
Both vehicles were badly damaged and had to be towed from the scene.
The collision remains under investigation. Maillet said charges may be pending.
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FSD Board makes cuts to maintenance budget
By
Editor
Prepare to see foothills schools get a lot uglier.
Under-funding from the provincial government and ever-increasing utility fees has forced the Foothills School Division (FSD) to drastically cut operations and maintenance services, and more cuts are expected before the next school year.
According to Jay Pritchard, associate superintendent of FSD, the division's operations and maintenance budget was going to be short $311,000 by August 31. Reducing services, he said, was the division's only option.
'In order to have that budget end up balanced, we needed to reduce a bunch of services in a hurry,' he said.
Cuts have been made to grounds maintenance, structural maintenance, mechanical and electrical maintenance and utilities.
This means there will be no service for parking lots or playing fields (except grass cutting), no repairs to fences, playgrounds, concrete or irrigation systems, no tree pruning (except emergencies) and no contracted snow removal.
There will also be no painting, no re-coating of gymnasium floors and minimal air conditioning repairs. After-hours ventilation will be eliminated, thermostats will be adjusted to reduce consumption and other consumption issues will be reviewed.
According to Rick Byers, director of maintenance for FSD, most of the cuts have been to contracted work. As a result, some building quality restoration projects have already been cancelled.
'I feel powerless to improve it and personally embarrassed that we can't maintain our facilities to a higher standard,' said Byers. 'We've gone through so many years of drought and famine in this department and there is no end in sight.'
Byers said the service cuts are a result of a 10-year 'inappropriate funding level' to maintain school facilities. He said that despite the division having grown 20,000 square metres in the last 10 years, the equivalent of four or five new schools, funding from the provincial government has only increased by $6,000. In the same 10 years, full-time staff has been reduced from 17 to 14.5.
'That's nowhere near sufficient,' he said.
In the meantime, Byers said insurance, which the operations and maintenance department pays for, has increased by 30 per cent, and utility costs have gone up 60 per cent in the last five years.
'We're in dire straits,' he said.
Unfortunately, relief is not expected any time soon. The FSD has projected there will be an $850,000 shortfall in the next school year and Pritchard said Alberta Infrastructure is rumored to announce a zero per cent increase in funding when the next budget is released.
'That isn't what I want,' said Pritchard. 'We need a 12 per cent increase and that just isn't going to happen.'
As a result, Pritchard said cuts to operations and maintenance services are likely to continue into the next school year.
'These cuts, unless there's an increase in funding, are going to be catastrophic,' he said. 'I think we'll be into staff reductions. I don't see any other way to get there.'
Byers is equally frustrated. Despite trying to remain optimistic, he said he does not expect the government will put maintenance as a higher priority any time soon.
If they do release additional funding, he said, it will have to be a fairly significant amount before the projects that have been cut can be reinstated.
'If you're not going to maintain what you build, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me,' he said.
For more coverage of impact of budget cuts see pages 10 and 11 [of this week's printed issue].
