GYRD still wants dog park for new high school

It’s been more than a month since the Municipality of Jasper held a meeting regarding the decision whether or not to land swap with Grande Yellowhead Regional Division (GYRD), which wants to build a new school on the current dog park.

While the municipality is still accepting public feedback on its website, GYRD has requested a meeting with the town to discuss the future destination of the school.

John Stitzenberger, GYRD chair, said the board still hopes the land swap will be approved, but nonetheless was looking forward to discussing feedback with the municipality.

Mayor Richard Ireland said the municipality is happy to meet with the board. “Our view is that we should discuss the results of the public meeting,” Ireland said.

“The community obviously has a number of concerns and we’d like to discuss those and the approach that Grande Yellowhead might want to take in light of those concerns.”

Stitzenberger said the meeting will probably take place in mid-April sometime, and according to Ireland, if all goes to plan the municipality will make a decision shortly after the meeting. He suggested another option may arise from the meeting instead of a land swap.

“We’ll see whether there are other opportunities that arise based on the input from residents and if not we will simply deal with the request,” he said.
Stitzenberger said he was glad to see the number of responses, and although he had reviewed some information from the municipality, it was too soon to comment.

“I think it’s good that a lot of feedback was generated from the people that were there and we’ll have to take a look at it and see where we sit on the decisions and what the town wants to do, [but] we still have a request for the land swap,” he said.