Mayor David Gillan at the unveiling of city council's newly renovated chambers Monday. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

NB council

City unveils new council chambers space

Mar 5, 2024 | 4:32 PM

North Battleford city council now has a new council chambers to call their own.

The venue, located in Room 107 at the Don Ross Centre, was officially unveiled at a ceremony Monday afternoon.

The aim of the project was to ensure council chambers are completely accessible to people of all abilities. To access the room, people have only a few stairs to cover, or they also have the option of using the elevator down the hall.

The former council chambers located at City Hall can only be accessed by climbing three flights of stairs to reach the second storey of the building.

“[It’s] more inclusive and more accessible, especially for those with mobility challenges. We want to be truer to a totally inclusive community,” Mayor David Gillan said. “The Don Ross Centre has an elevator, so we’re fully accessible now. I hope that anybody who wants to come and see council’s meetings, whether they have any type of mobility challenges or not, they can now come and watch council, and they can even run for council because this is an election year.”

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Gillan was pleased with the outcome of the renovation project.

The initiative also came within the city’s budget of about $300,000.

“I think the last report I saw it was on budget,” Gillan said. “So I want to thank obviously the contractors too who worked very tirelessly on this project… and our administration for getting this done and keeping it on budget.”

Deputy City Manager and City Clerk Stacey Hadley was the project manager on the renovation project.

City council first moved into the room with some temporary fixes about 18 months ago. The renovation work started a year-and-a-half ago and also involved implementing a new audio-visual system for the space.

“I think it’s important in a project like this that first and foremost our taxpayers’ dollars and public funds come first,” Hadley said. “We wanted to make sure our council had what they needed to represent the authority of our city, without overstating it or overspending on anything that was unimportant. There were a lot of things that were originally taken out of the design to meet that need, but I feel like we’ve met it perfectly.”

The old council chambers can still be used by city administration and as a meeting room for guests or for office space in the future.

Gillan noted many of the photographs of the previous city mayors have been moved to the new council chambers also, with more to come.

“We wanted to bring down here the pictures of the previous mayors, so we never forget about the service [they provided],” he said.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow