Coalmont is on its way to acquiring some community property. We need to do this now, because in a few years crown land will be difficult or impossible for us to get.

Our Area ‘H’ representative, Brad Hope, is putting in a bid for the Regional District to get two contiguous lots on the corner of Main and Campbell Avenue. This would probably be in excess of 35,000 square feet, but the exact details of what we end up with will not be known until the application gets processed by the Provincial land authorities. If all goes well this should take something like a year, perhaps less if we’re lucky. The arrangement will be a Nominal Rent Tenure Agreement where we will pay something like a dollar a year.

The spark for all this was a difficulty in finding a place for our meetings. Solving that problem is an obvious first step, but one can imagine that some day we could also want a volunteer fire hall. In any case, we can’t start to make realistic plans for what we are going to build until we have the land.

Building something is also a more difficult endeavour for us. There will be real work and real costs involved. We probably have to raise some money ourselves, which we can certainly do, but the ongoing cost of maintaining a building requires careful consideration. I believe that this is where we have to be both frugal and clever. We should not settle for something temporary or inferior. We don’t need everything at once, and if we don’t get carried away, we can have something beautiful and small which we can afford to maintain.

In any case, getting a piece of public land is an important development for our little town. Building a meeting place is downright exciting, although it will take some time. In the meanwhile we can always dream. And we should.

~ Ole Juul