Straffordville hall to be repaired, remain in public hands

A group of concerned citizens has convinced Bayham’s elected officials to keep Straffordville Community Centre and re-open it to public use after needed improvements are done in the New Year.

Straffordville resident Marni Wolfe appeared before Bayham councillors at their meeting on Thursday, Nov. 5 and informed them her group, “The Concerned Residents of Bayham,” had secured pledges and in-kind labour donations for $101,525 towards the estimated $500,000 project to fix the community centre and re-open it to the public.

She also informed the elected officials and a packed, standing room only gallery that her group had collected a total of 1,525 signatures on a petition that supported keeping the Straffordville hall as a municipally-owned facility.

Ms. Wolfe also presented a revamped budget for the Straffordville hall she believed would help the facility break even with reduced expenditures and increased revenues.

After a discussion that featured several angry outbursts from members of the gallery, all Bayham councillors, even Mayor Paul Ens and Deputy Mayor Tom Southwick who had been vocal in their support to sell the Straffordville hall to a church group, voted to simply receive a bylaw as information that would have approved the sale of the hall.

By receiving the bylaw as information, it killed the sale of the facility to Straffordville Evangelical Mennonite Church.

Afterwards, the councillors then unanimously approved a resolution that directed staff to send a letter of thanks to the church group for their offer to purchase the Straffordville hall, to prepare tender documents with the municipal engineer to address the deficiencies within the hall that had led to its closure and to meet with Ms. Wolfe to obtain details on her proposals relating to the facility’s operating budget, future management structure and receipt of fundraising pledges.