Wood Buffalo has been short listed for both the 2017 Alberta 55 Plus Games and the 2018 Alberta Winter Games.
As part of the bid tour, a pep rally is being held Tuesday, November 24 at 10 a.m. at Father J.A. Turcotte school at 8553 Franklin Ave.
There will be representatives from the bid committees for both games, the bid selection committees, Alberta Sport Connection and local students.
You can also go to show your support for bringing the Games to Wood Buffalo.
Council approved the bids for both Games on November 3.
The bid to host the 2017 Alberta 55 Plus Games came with $20,000 to cover the cost of the bid selection tour.
If Wood Buffalo is selected as the host of the Games another $650,000 will be given to the host committee from the emerging issues reserve fund.
Council also approved the bid for the 2018 Alberta Winter Games and a grant of $30,000 to cover the cost of the bid selection tour for that process.
That approval also carried a $3.3M grant from the RMWB’s emerging issues reserve for the host committee should the bid be successful.
There was some skepticism on the part of some council members, including Lance Bussieres, Tyran Ault and Colleen Tatum, that hosting the games would not carry the benefit to residents predicted by the host committees presenting to council.
A report on the impact of the Western Canada Summer Games is due in the coming weeks but won’t be available until after these bids have been submitted.
Mayor Melissa Blake said she believes hosting these kinds of events is worth the expenditure at the front end.
“One of the considerations that you have when you look to support or not support these things is what is it going to look at costing the municipality to host and if we’re putting in more money than we’re going to get in return then we probably wouldn’t make that investment,” she said on November 3.
“What we have experienced, and certainly what we hope to hear in the next few weeks when we get the year-end report from the Western Canada Summer Games, is that these games bring a lot of economic spin-off to the community and that the opportunity for these two games to bring in what I think is more important is for people to see, feel, and experience our community as a community as opposed to what they read in the media elsewhere,” said Blake.
She said that ambassadorship is an incredible thing to be able to export from the games should Wood Buffalo be the successful bidders for either event.
