The City of Moose Jaw’s Parks and Recreation Department has received just under $1 million in provincial and federal grants for five major projects. 

Moose Jaw City Council received an update on these projects during Monday night’s meeting. 

The city received $761,019 through the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program’s (ICIP) COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream. The city’s contribution will be $276,781 for a total project cost of $1.04 million. 

The project will see the city install 661 solar panels to the Yara Centre, City Hall and the Moose Jaw Events Centre. Light fixtures will also be replaced at the Yara Centre with LED bulbs and fixtures. 

The project is estimated to save the city $85,000 each year for a three to four-year payback on the investment. 

The installation of the solar panels at the Yara Centre and City Hall was completed in April of 2022 with both buildings now producing solar energy. 

For the Moose Jaw Events Centre, 300 of the 375 solar panels will be installed as of the end of this month. However, the project did run into some delays around the May long weekend. 

“When loading the project materials onto the roof, the contractor failed to follow the weight capacities that were provided through the engineer and had some structural failure on the southeast corner,” said Director of Parks and Recreation Derek Blais. 

Temporary shoring is in place so that it doesn’t pose a risk to the public. Permanent fixes will be completed in the spring and summer of 2023 as it is estimated to take about 18 months to complete. After those repairs are made, the remaining 75 panels will be installed. 

The original proposal for the solar panels was to include the City Complex and the Kinsmen Sportsplex. However, those buildings were not structurally capable of having solar panels attached to them. 

“Other opportunities could be explored for ground-mounted solar panels and different things like that, but as far as affixing to the building itself, it would be very difficult to do without achieving really any kind of savings,” Blais said. 

City Manager Jim Puffalt reminded city council that the grant was only available if panels could be attached to the building. 

The city also received a $109,350 grant from Western Economic Diversification and Canada’s Canada Community Revitalization fund for the $145,000 Crescent Park Pathway Upgrades project. 

The project includes: 

Installing new asphalt trails (75 metres) 
Converting crushed dust trails to asphalt (537 metres) 
Removal and replacement of existing asphalt trails (325 metres) 
Recapping existing asphalt trails (190 metres) 
The project began on Aug. 15 and is expected to wrap up by the end of September. 

The city received $5,000 from the Sask. Culture Community Cultural Engagement and Planning Grant for the City of Moose Jaw Culture Plan Phase 2. 

Phase 2 is the plan development stage of the project. This includes community engagement and consultation for the purposes of envisioning and developing community goals. Phase 2 kicked off on May 4 and is projected to move into Phase 3 in early 2023. 

Moose Jaw received $25,000 from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Government of Canada through their Green Municipality Fund, Community Building Monitoring and Analysis Grant. The funds will go towards the installation of energy sub-monitoring systems on 10 of the city’s largest greenhouse gas emitting buildings as put of the city’s Climate Action Plan. 

Finally, the city received $45,000 from Infrastructure Canada’s Active Transportation Fund for Moose Jaw’s trails and pathways master plan. 

The master plan will be the city’s first long-term planning document for multi-use trail development in the future. According to the city, there are currently over 40 km of trails and the plan will build upon those existing trails.