Meetings changed to accommodate school decision
Andrea Macko, Staff Reporter As a way to show “visible leadership,” according to mayor Jamie Hahn, council decided to move its next two meetings in order to attend Avon Maitland District School Board meetings.
St. Marys Town Council and the Avon-Maitland board follow the same schedule for their regular meetings – the second and fourth Tuesday of each month.
The May 13 Avon-Maitland meeting will be held in St. Marys, in order to hear public opinion on where the new elementary school should be built, and a final board decision is expected at the May 27 board meeting, to be held in Seaforth.
The next two meetings of town council will be held on the Monday evenings – May 12 and May 26 – so that council can attend both board meetings.
Councillor Don Van Galen, who also sat on the facilities advisory committee, said that council needed to be at the meetings to support “parents who will in no way be pleased” with the board’s decision. At the last Avon Maitland board meeting on Apr. 22, the board staff recommended building a new Junior Kindergarten to Grade 6 facility at the Pyramid Centre, with Grade 7 and 8
students being housed at DCVI.
Van Galen told council that he was “disappointed” with the recommendation, as it is contrary to the “one and only” option presented by the facilities advisory committee in February; a Junior Kindergarten to Grade 8 facility at the Pyramid Centre site. He also critiqued a portion of the same report that said “administration had originally planned on building the Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12 option at St. Marys DCVI,” inferring that the facilities advisory process was a sham.
He also disapproved of the board’s “retreat to Seaforth (where the board usually holds its meetings)” to make its decision on May 27.
“I can only imagine they feel uncomfortable making the decision here,” he told council.