Funding for Enchant library

By Cole Parkinson
Vauxhall Advance
cparkinson@tabertimes.com

The Enchant Public Library will soon see some repairs within their facility thanks to a local grant.

The Community Priorities Fund has granted $4,000 to the library and in total they have dished out $269,155 this year to 36 different projects throughout the area.

With the $4,000, the library will be putting the money to good use by getting new flooring within the building.

“We applied for the grant, our building was built in 1992, so our flooring is 26 years old. It is definitely showing the signs of wear and tear. With this project, we’re a small library, we have used the Community Priorities grant in the past for shelving so we thought it was well worth our time and effort to put in a submission to get help with funding for the flooring,” said Sharon Hagen, Enchant Public Library manager.

Other organizations in the area who benefitted from the grants include Arden T. Litt Centre For Learning in Grassy Lake who received $5,000, Wrentham Public Library who received $3,700 and Friends of Taber Literacy Association who also were granted $5,000.

With Enchant, the process for applying for the grants were relatively simple but they relied heavily on the Municipal District of Taber.

The M.D. was essential to getting the grant because of the library’s status as an organization.

“Basically we just followed the process and we got tremendous help from the people who set up the program to make it so easy. Being we’re not a charity, we have to go through the M.D. of Taber to get the grant. When we do that we go through Derrick Krizsan (CAO for the M.D.) and the same thing there, his help with the programs like that make it so much easier for small libraries like us. From that point on, when you get support from the M.D., you just follow the process with their help following along you make your presentation and wait and hope you’re one of the viable organizations that gets the grant money. Fortunately for us, we were,” continued Hagen.

Since getting the grant, the library has been working towards the repairs within the facility.
With the money already in hand, most of the focus has been shifted towards getting everything set for when the work will start.

“We’ve received the money and the money is made out to the M.D. of Taber because we don’t qualify as a non-profit so once the project is done I take the cheque and take it to the M.D. to submit our portion. Then the M.D. of Taber will pay the supplier,” said Hagen. “We have a full year to get it done. We’ve booked in, hopefully being that we have to move so many books in the library, for June 13 as our target date.”

With a date already penciled in, the facility has plans in place to be closed for the entire week.

As the repairs will require most of the library to be empty, there wasn’t many viable ways to keep the library open, hence the closure.

“We’ll have to close for the week of June 13 because we literally have to gut out the center of the library and put it in a trailer, let them put the floor down and then put everything back in,” added Hagen.

With the timeline effectively set, Hagen is looking forward to getting the repairs done. To keep up to date on events at the Enchant Public Library, visit http://www.enchantlibrary.ca.

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