The Willow Creek MD has privatized three local parks to save money.

CAO Derrick Krizsan says council decided this was a good way to go.

"Council is looking for ways to focus on our core services and through our process of asset management we've determined that operation of the parks wasn't a core service and we began looking for alternatives to service delivery," he says. "There was some expression of interest by the local Elks group in Stavely and it checked a few of the boxes council was interested in ensuring that for services delivery consistency that those boxes were checked."

He says they wanted to transfer the operations to an organization where the benefits from any profits at the parks would be kept in the local area, the level of service would remain similar to the current level of service and any cost savings that were achieved would come back to the MD to pay for core services like transportation and roads.

The Stavely Elks Lodge #112 and the Stavely Royal Purple Elks Lodge #99 took over management and operation of the Willow Creek Park, Clear Lake Park and Pine Coulee Park effective April 1, on a three-year contract.

Krizsan says the MD expects to save about $300,000 over three years.

"We had a great deal of discussion with the Elks, they have a very high standard to meet, we had very dedicated staff in those parks who did a tremendous job for many years and really were a great credit to the MD of Willow Creek and were great representatives and did a great job operating the parks," Krizsan says. "We understand through our discussions with the Elks they have made arrangements with an organization that will assist them with operation of the parks as well, they will draw on their great membership to maintain and operate the parks."

Krizsan says these are interesting times we're living in and governments on every level are not immune to the financial implications of the pandemic and says there's only one taxpayer and they have to be as fiscally responsible as they can be.

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