Wakamow Valley Authority has made job cuts. 

In the wake of provincial funding for Wakamow being eliminated in the provincial budget June 1, Wakamow has responded by eliminating four seasonal, full-time maintenance positions. 

"When you lose ($157,000) from the province when you were counting on it and had already budgeted for it, it was inevitable..we had to lay off four positions," said Wakamow CEO Margaret Moran. "As per our collective bargaining agreement with (labour union) Unifor it goes by reverse seniority. Whoever had the least amount of hours, that's who got laid off."

Moran says they are left with 5 maintenance workers on the payroll, and they will need to operate "more efficiently and effectively", using the speed skating oval in Kiwanis River Park as an example. 

"We would have (the oval) on a rotation where we mow it once every two weeks," Moran explained. "If there's nothing happening on it, we'll maybe mow it once a month (now) or if there's a special event we'll go in and mow it."

"If there's something that needs to be repaired, of course it will be repaired," said Moran, adding that "any safety issues will be addressed right away" but "aesthetics" of the Valley may suffer. 

Moran said the cuts would save them about $21,000-30,000 this year, and that the cuts did affect other budgetary plans. 

"We were going to hire another administrative position - that's been taken out of the budget. We were going to hire a campground host but that's been taken out..that's about $40-thousand right there (in savings)."

As for future cuts, Moran said "probably we'll be looking at not putting as much into reserves for general maintenance, like to fix roofs in the buildings."