The City of Flin Flon is looking for a new chief administrative officer. In a statement released by the City Dec. 5, officials confirmed that CAO Nicole Hartman was let go this week after about a year and a half on the job.
In terms of procedure, the council plans to hold the byelection in a similar way as the byelection held last year, with workers outfitted with personal protective equipment and mandatory masks and social distancing inside City Hall. Voters will be pointed toward one of 11 available polling stations in the main chamber, with whichever poll voters use determined by where they live. Election workers will point voters toward the correct poll. Every voter will be given a golf pencil to tick the box of their preferred candidate, which they will then take with them when they leave the hall. With increased COVID-19 cases throughout Manitoba - including variants of concern cases - organizers are carefully monitoring case loads, particularly in the north, before the election. As of press time, the vote is slated to go ahead as originally planned.
“We’ve been advised that this matter is with the Department of Finance.” The centre closed its doors for the last time for what was first announced as a temporary shutdown Jan. 28, 2020. After an engineering assessment deemed the building no longer safe to use, the City announced the permanent closure of the Aqua Centre Feb. 14. The building had a partial roof collapse in November, followed not long after by the entire building being demolished and the site flattened. The City of Flin Flon applied to the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) in Sept. 2019, a federal grant that supplies around $180 billion to community projects and infrastructure throughout Canada. In the past, the City has received about $150,000 through the grant for a pair of projects - renovations to the Flin Flon Community Hall and the City’s bus garage.