Where will they put the new high school?

After a two-hour meeting on Feb. 19, where the various possibilities for the new Jasper Jr./Sr. High School were debated, the Municipality of Jasper has published public feedback on its website, but has yet to report back to the Grande Yellowhead Regional Division school board (GYRD).

While there were just two options given to Jasperites at the meeting, many members of the public expressed that neither would suffice, with most groups suggesting an alternative should be found on land currently owned by GYRD.

Dubbed option C, the third alternative would mean no land swap, but would be in a different location than option B, which lies along Geikie Street on the current high school property.

While a diagram drafted by a Jasper resident puts option C in a definitive situation, an official option C has yet to be put forward by either GYRD or the municipality.

GYRD chair John Stitzenberger said “until we come up with a definitive, what option C is, it’s really pretty tough to say exactly what it is. All I heard was people talking about other locations for the school, we don’t really have anything nailed down.”

While option C appears to be a popular option with Jasperites, GYRD is still hoping that the municipality with come through and agree to the proposed land swap. For the moment, GYRD is waiting to hear whether the town will agree to a land swap.

“We haven’t received any information from the town of Jasper yet,” said Stitzenberger. “We’re expecting them to send us some kind of package on what their plan is... what their decision will be. The town of Jasper has to give us an idea about what they got out of the meeting, what their information was out of it and then we’ll have to have a board discussion on where we want to go from there.”

Stitzenberger said that option A, which would see the new school built in the current dog park, was the most attractive option in GYRD’s opinion and believed that this was also the consensus reached at the public meeting held in June 2008.

“From our public meeting in June [2008], we came out of that meeting that option A was the preferred option and that’s why we asked the council if they’d be willing to do the land swap,” he said.

According to Stitzenberger, if the Municipality does not agree to the land swap the board will have to reassess alternatives. “We’d have to go back and take another look at it again, he said. “It puts us back a step, not to square one, but it does put us back a step.”

Stitzenberger said that options A and B were arrived at through a “value management assessment team put together by Alberta Infrastructure that included architects, people from the [Alberta] infrastructure department, people from the school division, GYRD, people from École Desroches, and they together with the architects and the cost consultants involved came up with viable options to present to us and that’s why those options were there”

Council said they hadn’t yet reviewed the comments.