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Regional: More talk needed on bus service
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
“Well!” huffs one angry senior citizen. “If you start doing it for one group, the next thing you know, everybody wants it! We just can’t have that, not at all!" Hot topic? Sort of.
The “hot topic’’ is getting a few of our local seniors riled. The topic is, the suggestion maybe the senior’s non-profit group, the Golden Age Club, could make a deal with High Prairie’s Marigold Enterprises so Marigold could use the Golden Age Club bus. This Golden Age Club bus ferries seniors around town and around the region.
It’s an “on demand’’ bus service. One phones in and makes an appointment. At the arranged time, the bus arrives at the front door for a shopping trip, a visit, a doctor’s appointment or what have you. A while later, the bus comes back and takes the senior home. Sometimes, a field trip to another centre is made, hauling a load of people off to do whatever, where ever.
Marigold, for those unaware, is a another local, non-profit dedicated to helping people with disabilities. It operates a small engraving shop, is a delivery drop off point for freight and dry cleaning and also a place to pay bills. Hopes include building a resident complex on the old Turbo gas site.
Marigold would love to have a bus service for clients. The idea landed in front of local councils for no particular reason, except one: Both the M.D. of Big Lakes and Town of High Prairie give the Golden Age Club annual money to help operate the senior’s bus service.
Former director of Marigold Vivian Cox has a question. If every taxpayer is subsidizing the senior’s bus, then why can’t every taxpayer, or at least, ones in need, have access to the bus? This is a fair question.
In answer, anybody over the age of 50, including Marigold clients, can use the bus. Just become a member of the Golden Age Club. Age 50 is cutoff point. Next, Golden Age members worked bingos, casinos, did their homework filling out grants, and basically, bought the bus with their own money. It’s their bus. They own it. Simple as that.
Given that, sure it’s worth a try to put on pressure using the operating grant aspect. Still, at the end of the day, it’s going to be a Golden Age Club decision, not any council decision.
Anyway, we’re sure some kind of arrangement might come of this. Remember, this community belongs to all of us. We’re all in this together. We can make something work if we try.
In the meantime, one can’t help remember a fellow named John Eriksson. Three years ago he leaves High Prairie for Ontario. He returns as High Prairie town manager. He finds to his amusement, one of the same issues, and a pet idea of his he left behind, is back on the table. That issue is some kind of community and regional bus service. Interesting.
Obviously, a need is still there.
The challenge for that dream of such a service is justify moving it from a service for a few groups, to a service for most everybody. Moving that forward, one step at a time, will take a lot of talk and a lot of work, but it can be done.
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