Vienna group pleads to save community centre

by Rob Perry of The Aylmer Express

A group of Vienna and area residents have banded together to fight the possible sale of the Vienna Community Centre, which Bayham has declared surplus to its needs but has also decided to make $70,000 in upgrades to the facility.

That includes a recent decision by Bayham council to replace the existing geothermal heating and cooling system for the centre with a regular furnace. The pipes used for heat exchange by the geothermal system run into an adjacent park, which Bayham intends to keep.

The residents against any sale include Rose Sofalvi Beuk, Pat Cole, Susanne Schlotzhauer, Diane Soper, Wendy Carmichael and Leo Aspden, the last a longtime member of the Vienna Lions Club, which has to this point met in the basement of the hall, as did a Lioness Club, which recently became a “Swans” service club.

The closure opponents are calling themselves the BRATs—Bayham Residents Asking for Transparency.

They recalled their own experiences in the hall in an interview in the adjoining park on Thursday, July 29. They couldn’t get into the hall, even for the Lions and Lioness clubs to retrieve their belongings, at this point, they said. They said they had only learned about Bayham council declaring the community centre surplus to the municipality’s needs, a precursor to a sale, by reading that in The Aylmer Express.

In an email to the Express, Ms. Beuk had written, “It’s upsetting that we found out about something really significant happening in our neighbourhood from the newspaper. There was no transparency or community involvement by our locally elected representatives when major decisions were made.”

The replacement of the geothermal unit seemed premature, she stated on behalf of the BRATs, since the public hadn’t yet been consulted on the potential sale of the centre.

“When I asked Mayor (Ed) Ketchabaw what was going to happen, he assured me that despite the heading in the June 30, 2021, paper that the “Vienna Community Center will be sold off to fund Straffordville work,” there is nothing to worry about.

“He claims that the title is misleading and the VCC is merely declared surplus. He claimed that nothing will be done until there’s a public meeting to allow the residents of Vienna and the surrounding area to voice their concerns. But that’s not true.”

When it came to the new furnace, “If the building is not yet for sale, it’s hard to understand why any work needs to be done.

“The geothermal system might be old, but it’s still working well according to the company that installed it. The real reason to start work is to prepare the building for sale.”

Ms. Beuk said BRATs had already collected over 1,000 signatures on a petition to stop any sale of the community centre.

“Many people share history with us about having had their wedding receptions, graduation celebrations, or having attended many other events there over the years. In February 2018 when Vienna flooded the residents of homes that got flooded fled to the VCC to keep warm and safe.

“When I first moved to Vienna in 2015, my first event was to hear the local candidates answer questions and following that the election also took place there.

“Vienna used to be a busy place with several places to gather. Now the two churches are gone, the elementary and secondary school are gone, the restaurant is no longer operating as a restaurant and if you have driven through Vienna, it’s evident that there are no businesses on (the) main street.

“There really is nowhere for people to go to in case of emergency or a place to socialize and connect with others in the community.”

Ms. Beuk said Vienna residents had been looking forward to returning to events at the community centre with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but despite the loosening of restrictions, “The community centre remains unavailable to us.”

Ms. Cole, who has resided in Vienna for 73 years, recalled the community centre had been built in the early 1960s. When she got married, her wedding reception was held there, she said. The centre gave Vienna residents a place “to be with the people you live around” in a social setting.

“If they take this place away from me, it’s going to take away a piece of my heart.”

Ms. Schlotzhauer has only resided in Vienna for the last three years but had gone to the hall for all-candidates meeting and to vote in elections. The meetings were held in Vienna because its community centre had a larger capacity and better parking than the one in Straffordville, she noted.

Ms. Beuk moved back to Vienna six years ago, having resided for years before that in Mississauga, where a community centre had been a hub for neighbourhood activities.

On return to Vienna, she too had attended an all-candidates meeting there, and then voted in an election there. She’d also attended a fundraising dinner and auction for the Bayham Historical Society at the hall.

“It just made me feel so much a part of the community,” she stated.

Ms. Soper, a Bayham resident for 32 years said her daughter had taken baton lessons at the community centre as a child, and the final show had been held there as well, and that was her first and best memory of the place. It hosted a variety of events through the year, up until COVID-19 hit, she said. “It’s a remarkable building. It needs upgrades, but it’s a solid building. This is the centre of this community.”

Ms. Carmichael moved to Vienna in 2018. One of her first social events in the village had been a penny sale fundraiser at the community centre, “where everyone was bidding on silly little things.”

She’d come from Embro, and its community centre was also a hub of activities there.

Mr. Aspden, a member of the Vienna Lions Club for 51 years, remembered hauling gravel to the former site of the village’s high school to help build the foundation of the new community centre.

The Lions held two fundraising dinners a year at the community centre. Each year, the club donated $500 each to Christmas toy and food drives in East Elgin, and then delivered resulting holiday baskets to Vienna-area homes. The Lioness Club had been equally active, he said. Every table, chair and dish in the community centre had been purchased by the two clubs and, while the municipality denied this, they’d also paid for washroom improvements several years ago.

Without the community centre to hold meetings at, “We’re done. We’ve no place to go.”

Before COVID-19, Ms. Cole said, the community centre had on average hosted 1.7 events a week.

Ms. Carmichael said the centre had been a place where residents from different cultural backgrounds could gather as a group and get to know each other.

Vienna was a “marginalized area,” she said, and the hall would be an idea place post-COVID to offer medical and mental health services for residents who couldn’t drive elsewhere for them, she said.

Ms. Schlotzhauer said Bayham council’s decision to direct federal-provincial infrastructure grant program money into the Bayham Community Centre in Straffordville instead of Vienna’s hall was made “without realizing how they’re destroying the fabric of Bayham.”

Ms. Cole agreed. Since the former Bayham Township amalgamated with the villages of Port Burwell and Vienna in 1998, “They’ve slowly been taking things away from Vienna.”

Ms. Schlotzhauer said the sale of the Vienna Community Centre was integral to Bayham council’s plan to finance its share of proposed large-scale improvements to Straffordville’s community centre, so they doubted claims that a decision to sell hadn’t been made yet.

They’re concerned they’re going up against a biased council in making a pitch to keep the Vienna Community Centre running.

Ms. Schlotzhauer said the focus of councillors was on using revenue from a sale to fund the Straffordville improvements.

“People are totally left out of the conversation,” she said. The plan for Straffordville was too extravagant and meant emptying three municipal reserve funds and selling the Vienna Community Centre to fund the municipality’s share.

“We have no one at the table,” Ms. Carmichael stated. They’ve instead appealed to Elgin-Middlesex-London MP Karen Vecchio and MPP Jeff Yurek to intervene.

The BRATs hope, though, to meet with Bayham council on Thursday, Aug. 19, to make their case, but they’re not counting on being allowed to do so. They hope to ask council to reconsider the Straffordville plan and keep the Vienna Community Centre open.

Declared surplus
The Aylmer Express previously reported on a June 17 decision by Bayham councillors:

Bayham councillors on Thursday, June 17, approved putting the Vienna Community Centre up for sale in order to help fund $2-million in improvements to the Bayham Community Centre in Straffordville.

The sale would effectively leave the Straffordville hall as the only one owned by the municipality in all of Bayham.

Grants from the provincial and federal government will cover about $1.4-million of the Straffordville work, leaving Bayham to pay $534,881.

Bayham Treasurer Lorne James presented council with two funding options. The first would pay for the municipal share through the sale of non-core assets, specifically the Vienna Community Centre, and by tapping various reserve funds.

The second option was a five-year loan, which the municipality would have to repay at a cost of $110,000 a year.

Even with that, the sale of the Vienna hall was recommended, since $665,000 in repairs and renovations would be needed there in the near future to meet accessibility requirements, fix the heating system and improve the parking lot, he stated.

Cr. Susan Chilcott said, “Regardless of this project, the Vienna Community Centre would be on the chopping block to fund what we are doing in the future.”

Mayor Ketchabaw agreed. “It is sobering.” He noted that the motion to close and sell the Vienna Community Centre could potentially be reversed later, as happened in a similar situation with the Straffordville hall a few years ago.

Not necessarily for sale
The matter was discussed at a recent Bayham council meeting following a letter with similar concerns from the Bayham historical society and a report published in The Express read:

Bayham Administrator Thomas Thayer said, “I know there is a lot of concern and consternation in the community about how the VCC is being addressed. The concern is it is being done without public consultation.”

He claimed that just because the facility had been deemed surplus didn’t mean it would be sold.

A survey of the property would need to be completed, he said, and a valuation put on it by a registered real-estate appraiser.

A public comment period would need to follow, and while only 14 days was required for this, previously councillors had allowed 25 days when a similar decision was to be made about Eden Community Centre, he said. Only after that would councillors make a final decision, he said.

Originally published in the August 4, 2021 print edition.