The Town of Davidson has been earmarked for $29,875 in federal funding, which will go towards upgrades to the electrical system at the community centre as well as the installation of a rooftop heating and cooling unit for the centre.

Gary Edom, administrator for the Town of Davidson, said the federal funding would cover half the costs of improving the wiring system and installing an air-conditioning unit for the centre. He said the total bill has been costed at $59,749 for the improvements with half of this amount coming back to the Town once the upgrades are completed and the progress report and invoices are sent in.

“For the first phase what we are going to do is put a bit of wiring in here,” said Edom. “It’s all kind of outdated and we’re still on breakers. This first phase has to be done by next March…but they are going to pay the full $17,000. Then the second phase, which is going to be (worked on) after April 1 is the air-conditioner for the auditorium and they are going to pay $12,000 towards it, but they’re paying half of the whole thing altogether, which is nice to get.”

The cost of the wiring improvements will amount to $17,050 and must be completed between July 30, 2012, and March 31, 2013. The government, through the Community Infrastructure Improvement Fund, which is delivered through Western Economic Diversification Canada, will cover the whole amount of this work.

The second phase of the project of installing an air-conditioner for the community centre comes at a cost of $42,399, and another $300 for signs. This work must be done between April 1, 2013, and March 31, 2014. The government will cover $12,674 for the air-conditioning improvements and $150 for the signs, totaling $29,874 or half of the total amount of $59,749.

Edom said the Town applied for this funding after Lynne Yelich, minister of state for Western Economic Diversification, announced in Kenaston in early July that $46.2 million has been allocated towards repairs and improvements to existing community facilities in Western Canada over the next two years. He said the funding they are receiving is everything that they applied for.

“The big thing is for the auditorium as it’ll be nice to have air-conditioning in there especially for the summer with weddings,” said Edom. “It gets so terribly hot in there for big functions in the summertime.”

He said the rewiring is a major project that needed to be completed because they are currently having trouble in the kitchen with “throwing breakers” when the coffee machines are turned on.

“We’re going to try adjusting some of that,” he said. “Get some new electrical panels put in, some new breakers and some wiring changed around. It would certainly work better.  We even had meetings in the council chambers where they plug in a bunch of laptops and they throw breakers. We hope to upgrade things, so that’s not a problem anymore.”

The Davidson Communities in Bloom first annual chili cook-off raised close to $3,200 for its operating expenses as a good crowd of around 50 people came out to the Davidson community centre Nov. 3 to taste the nine different chilis and judge the best minced beef and beans stew in the area.

Teams of nine competitors measured their own chili recipes against each other and by popular vote based on colour, aroma, consistency, taste and aftertaste the prize of a round of golf with cart and “a really nice hat” went to Rance Anderson and Tony Billett, who can now pronounce themselves the top chili chefs in Davidson.

This was the last event of the year for the not-for-profit Communities in Bloom, but they will be back in the spring to help beautify the town with public flowerbeds and gardens.

The influenza vaccine clinics are back up and running after a short shutdown due to concerns raised about the flu vaccine by Health Canada.

The Heartland Health region resumed its vaccination clinics last Wednesday after being shuttered for six days following a request by Health Canada after the flu vaccine made by pharmaceutical firm Novartis, which is the only vaccine used in Saskatchewan, was discovered to have clumping of particles in the vaccine in Europe.

Dr. David Torr, consulting medical health officer for the Heartland Health region, said the temporary ban on distribution of the vaccine was only a precautionary measure by Health Canada after one batch was found to have some particles in it. He said the batch used in Canada is safe and anyone who has received the vaccine already need not feel worried and do not need to get another shot.

“The batch that was in question is a different batch than the one we have here, it’s just the same manufacturer,” said Torr. “With the Canadian stock, nothing was seen here that was seen in Italy.”

Torr said following testing of the Canadian batch, Health Canada and Novartis have reiterated the optimal safety of the Canadian stock and he encourages anyone who has not yet been immunized to head to an influenza immunization clinic and get a shot.

He said that any clinics that were suspended will be rescheduled in the near future and all upcoming clinics will go on as planned.

“We should be able to catch up,” said Torr. “It was only a week that we went out.”

Students in the Sun West School Division are improving in their overall fitness according to the latest report from the recently implemented FitsStats program.

In the 2011-12 school year, 64 per cent of students ranked in the top two categories of physical fitness which classifies them as very fit, while the number of students in the lowest category of physical fitness dropped five percentage points from the school year previous to 20 per cent.

FitStats is a division-wide program that acts as an online tool for phys-ed teachers and individual students to track grades 6 to 12 student’s fitness levels through a common test in terms of health, which focuses on cardio-respiratory fitness and muscular strength, and in terms of skill related fitness, which takes into account power and agility.

Miles Bennett, Sun West School Division athletic commissioner/phys-ed mentor, said these results show students and phys-ed teachers are using the FitsStats program to improve on the division’s student fitness levels.

“No other jurisdiction in the province and no other school division in this province have this kind of data,” said Bennett. “Every phys-ed teacher out there is working almost independently. They are doing fitness tests and might be doing similar fitness testing, but you can’t really correlate the data because it’s not necessarily going to be all the same in how you do it.

“Based on the results that we’re seeing is the health of kids in Sun West is all pretty good and we can use that data to plan what we can do to improve the health of those kids in the lower (category). That is our objective.”

He said this program has provided “standardization” for all phys-ed teachers in the school division to test their students properly in order to understand where their students stand compared to other schools in the division.

Bennett first tried the program as a pilot at his school, Rosetown Central High, where he has served as a phys-ed teacher for 26 years. He then took the proposal for FitStats to the school division and three years later all the schools had signed on.

“We had a push-up test…in the 2010-11 year we had 2,800 entries and last year we had just about 28,000 entries,” he said. “It was a 1,000 per cent increase.”

To read more please see the Oct. 22 print edition of The Davidson Leader.