DIDSBURY - The proposed $2 million Didsbury Municipal Library renovation and expansion project will not be going ahead in 2022 after news came down that the municipality has been unsuccessful in obtaining a Community Facilities Enhancement Program (CFEP) grant from Alberta government this year, says the town's mayor.
“Absolutely it has set it back,” said Town of Didsbury Mayor Rhonda Hunter. “It won’t be built this year. We continue to be optimistic that the expansion is going to happen. Delays happen and you just have to bounce back and make sure you stay committed and focused.
“Council is committed to the expansion. Certainly it is a setback that our grant wasn’t approved. We are committed to making sure that expansion happens. Now our timelines are going to be a little bit different.”
The project proposes to expand the existing library into the adjacent former Town of Didsbury administration office. A joint initiative between the Town of Didsbury and the Didsbury Municipal Library Board, the project has been in the planning stages several years.
The 2022 CFEP large stream funding application could have resulted in up to $1 million matching funding for the project. The Town of Didsbury was recently informed that the project wasn’t successful in obtaining the funding for the current year.
The actual grant application was made by the library board with assistance from the town.
Town councillors and members of the library board will be meeting to discuss next steps in the coming days, she said.
“Council hasn’t had an opportunity to meet to discuss what the next steps are,” she said. “We will be doing that, sitting down to talk about next steps.”
The hope is that a CFEP grant application will be successful in 2023, she said.
“We are going to see what we can do better with the (next) grant application,” she said. “We’ve always talked about that CFEP grant being part of the funding for the project.”
CFEP grant applications are typically made in June, she noted.
The expansion of the library would benefit the community-at-large, library board chair Carolyn Massel said.
“As the oldest public library in the province, the library has a long-standing history of providing excellent service to this community and a larger, brighter space will allow us to further increase the programs and services that are available,” said Massel.
