Town of Battleford Council votes to sign MOU and have a say at the table. (Julia Lovett-Squires/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

MOU

Town votes in favour of signing regional arena MOU

Mar 18, 2025 | 1:02 PM

The Town of Battleford will officially have a seat at the table to learn more about the future of the Access Communications Centre.

On Monday night, the councillors voted to sign a memorandum of understanding with the City of North Battleford to join others in discussions about arena plans.

“As noted by the city, Mayor (Kelli) Hawtin, as well as (City Manager Randy) Patrick that there is no commitment financially to this, no commitment to having to build it,” said Mayor Ames Leslie.

“Just allows us to be in the planning process.”

The centre is expected to be completed by 2032.

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Coun. Doug Laing said they need to have a seat at the table.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” he said, to which Coun. Kevin Russell agreed.

“As a region, it’s in the forefront,” he said. “If we want to have our voice and what we want and what we can help out with, then I think… this is a big driver for our region.”

The motion passed unanimously, and Leslie said it’s the first time in his tenure that the region “is actually openly wanting to have a discussion” on a project.

“I look to what this direction will be, later on we can have discussion with the city as to what it needs,” said the mayor.

In a follow-up interview, once the deadline passes for people to sign, Leslie said the next step would be to get together and see what the framework will look like.

“What this facility maybe can be and should be, then also I think what the complexity of what the board’s going to look like,” he said referring to the number of representatives per signatory.

He said he hopes that there will be a couple per as that would create continuity of the working group moving forward.

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett.bsky.social