The ball that would bring Sicamous a full-time recreation director is now in the district’s court.

The Eagle Valley Sports and Leisure Society (EVSL) has asked that the district consider hiring not only a full-time recreation director, but also a community administrator whose job it would be to find and fill out grant applications. The salary for the two positions would be $57,200 each, or $114,400, which would come from the district budget.

This proposal was made by society president Michelle Wolff at the Nov. 12 regular council meeting.

She explained how as of 2007, volunteers and community organizations behind EVSL have broadened the society’s mandate to promote and implement community recreation and active living programs, while assisting existing groups and programs. And, with the expansion of the EVSL board, the society was able to offer new recreation and fitness programs, be actively involved in community awareness events, and even develop a recreation guide.

“It became quickly evident that despite the great community response to our efforts, we could not continue to manage all the myriad of details required to provide that level of organization unless we found a source of funding to employ some help,” said Wolff.

Earlier this year the society received a one-time grant through Active Living B.C., which was used to hire a temporary recreation co-ordinator, Dave Knight, who provided the society a good idea of what could be possible for the community if the position was full-time.

“Our chosen candidate has inspired us with a lot of wonderful ideas and we believe with support from the District of Sicamous, we can become a community that is active, healthy and vibrant in a sustainable way,” said Wolff.

Wolff said, after the meeting, that a full-time recreation co-ordinator would also allow the society board to focus on such things as overseeing activities and researching new opportunities.

“Our district does not have a recreation mandate, all they have is parks,” said Wolff. “So… when it comes to the rest of the recreation in the community, which in my mind and a lot of people’s minds, creates a sense of community, we just feel they need to get a recreation mandate.

“A lot of the research that’s been done has indicated that out of 40 communities with a population between 1,500 to 3,000, absolutely every one of them had a recreation director and a recreation mandate. So Sicamous is very unusual.”

The request for a grants co-ordinator, says Wolff, comes from experience and a perceived need in the community.

“It takes up a lot of time, and a lot of the volunteers don’t have the skill to write them,” said Wolff. “And time, there’s hours that go into each grant request, and there’s hundreds of grants out there, and each organization, there’s probably 10 a year they could be applying for but they just don’t have the manpower.

“And if we hire somebody, they can even be applying for the district themselves. There’s a lot of grants that can be run through the municipal district that benefit the whole community. So that’s why we thought of somebody to do all this grant work.”

Wolff says the proposed salaries of the two positions came out of research and the society’s income statements from 2007, adding the EVSL budget went up from $4,000 last year to $40,000 this year – an indication of the society’s success to date.

“We think the benefit that those two positions can bring us is going to be huge,” said Wolff. “The person doing the grant writing should be bringing tons of money into the community if they’re doing a good job. And we’d have that figured out within six months to a year by how successful they are in acquiring grants.”

Looking at the EVSL proposal, district administrator Alan Harris says he’s looking at different options, such as whether the Columbia Shuswap Regional District could be involved.

“Those things have to be looked at,” said Harris. “It will be brought up in the budget deliberations with the new council and we’ll see where it goes from there.”