Some changes will be coming to Keyano College’s Campus Development Plan to meet the changing local economy and to adjust for the loss of a $10 million grant from the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
At Tuesday night’s meeting council moved to cancel funding for the Keyano College Theatre Expansion after the RMWB and the College failed to reach an agreement about the terms and conditions attached to the funding.
Dr. Tracy Edwards, interim President and CEO of Keyano College, told MyMcMurray there was a misunderstanding from the outset that meant the College couldn’t agree to the terms.
“We understood at the college, that we were interested in participating in and having an advisory board for the community to give us information about the kinds of programs they would like to see in the theatre,” she said, reiterating comments she made before council on Tuesday night. “We actually just recently did an online survey to actually get that information which has since actually informed our programming for this year coming up, so we do consult with the community now and so we would have had no problem continuing to do that.”
In fact, they actually plan to increase public consultations and broaden the level of input this community has on programming.
The problem with the RMWB grant was that it required different kind of committee than what the college expected be created, Edwards said.
“When we received the agreement, the committee turned into a governance committee moreso than an advisory committee, so this committee would actually have a hand in running the theatre,” said Edwards. “Obviously since our assets are owned by the province we can’t cede control of those to another body.”
Edwards said that’s the rationale behind the college preferring not to accept the grant with the conditions that were attached to it.
“The RMWB, that wasn’t a provision that they were prepared to negotiate so we just decided it was probably just best to say thank you and hope that we can work with them again on another project in the future,” she said.
Were the municipality to offer a grant without those conditions the college would be interested in working with the RMWB.
“We’re very interested in partnering with the RMWB because we’re a big employer here in the community and we have a lot of resources and expertise and we like to be good corporate citizens,” said Edwards.
In the meantime, without that $10 million in funding and with the economic challenges facing not just Keyano but the entire community, the college is continuing to work through their Campus Development Plan.
“Right now with all of the things that have happened post-wildfire and all the issues that we’re facing relative to our enrollment for fall and our revenue projections and all of those things we have a lot of balls in the air right now,” she said.
The Campus Development Plan is one of them but Edwards was very adament that cutting the theatre program in its entirety is absolutely not one of the options.
“We’re not looking at that, no, not at the moment,” she said.
That’s not to say that there won’t be changes at Keyano College in the short- and long-term.
“Our board will be revisiting that (the Campus Development Plan) over the summer. We will continue to push to improve our facilities at Keyano, but there are a lot of variables right now, just like everyone’s facing in this community.”
She explained the Campus Development Plan is robust and dealt with many plans for retrofits and rebuilds at the Clearwater Campus.
“It’s quite a comprehensive document and at the time that it was created the economic condition of Fort McMurray was quite different than it is now, as you know, so we just have to step back and have a look at our plan and just see what is doable in the near-term until oil starts to come back and the community with it,” she said.
One of the first changes people in this community will notice are the anticipated increases to community engagement planned for the fall.
“If everything goes the way we hope it’s going to go after the planning session (this summer) we will be doing some, kind of, collaborations in the fall with different groups in the community to get our message out in terms of our vision for Keyano for the future so, at that time we’ll have a lot more information to share,” she said.
Edwards said the college hasn’t been as engaged with the community as she’d like it to be going forward so Keyano will be doing a lot more outreach than people have seen in the past.
