Walking trails around Lloydminster may see expansion and rehabilitation, pending a successful grant application.
The City of Lloydminster will be submitting a grant application for the Active Transportation Fund. This comes after council passed a motion at the Feb. 24 regular council meeting to submit the application.
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With this grant, the city looks to receive $3.12 million from the federal grant while only having to contribute roughly $2 million.
The application consulted with local teams to consider what projects to put in and financial constraints.
“When putting together our application, we consulted with the city’s engineering team, transportation, rec and culture, and the parks department to determine a scope of work that meets the requirements of the application, but also considered the financial constraints the city is going to have in the next five years,” said Ryan Hill, financial planning and analysis manager with the City of Lloydminster.
“We reviewed the trails and sidewalks masterplan we had done in January 2021 and there are several high-priority trails we feel need to be completed. Trails around the Cenovus Energy Hub were also included because they need to be completed as part of the property development agreement. Lastly, we looked at the Weaver Park Master Plan which was just completed in July 2024, and we included some trails in there as well.”
Hill says the trails will provide good connectedness between Weaver Heritage Park and the Cenovus Energy Hub.
The work will need to be done between 2025 and 2030 with items being brought forward in future years.
“We would be putting these predominantly in 2026, ‘27, ‘28, ‘29,” said Hill.
City manager, Dion Pollard, clarified the city typically budgets yearly for trails.
“Traditionally, have anywhere from a quarter of a million dollars to half a million dollars each year in our budget for trails,” he said. “In the past few years we’ve done the projects on the south end of the city on Highway 17, we’ve done from Cenovus head office to 40 Ave.”
He says the projects chosen to be part of this grant are high priority.
“They’re probably on the higher end of the priority list we would be completing should council approve trail money in the budget each year,” said Pollard.
If council is unsuccessful in the grant application, the city will not be committing the over $2 million for these projects.
Should the city get the grant and the projects are not completed before 2030, that could lead to losing the grant.
Coun. Jim Taylor asked how exactly the city would be getting the money, whether it’s a lump sum at the start or at the end.
“Typically, all grants pay out on a claims basis, so we would incur the costs, submit a claim, get reimbursed,” said Hill.
Coun. David Lopez wanted to know if user groups were consulted when considering what trail projects were chosen.
Adele Wakaruk, executive manager of corporate services, gave some insight into how the city chose what projects to include.
“We took into account key reports such as the Weaver Heritage Master Plan, the Lloydminster Facility Project Synopsis, Trails and Sidewalk Master Plan, Social Needs Assessment and Engagement as well as the Rec Facilities Feasibility Study. A lot of different reports were consulted in crafting this application, which takes into account some of the priorities the city has today,” she said.
Hill also provided some rough numbers as to how much money will be allocated to each project.
“Rough numbers, the Weaver Heritage Park is about 16 per cent of the application, the Cenovus Energy Hub is about 11, rehabilitation is about a third of it and the remaining 40 per cent is new trails,” he said.
Hill hopes to know the results of the grant application prior to budget 2026 but said it could take as long as nine months to find out.
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