While no firm date is set, or is planned to be set, the Badlands Community Facility is now slated to open some time  early in the new year.
    The most recent date for completion was set at December 30 of this year. Mayor Terry Yemen concedes that this deadline will not be met.
    “We are looking very early in 2012,” said Mayor Yemen.
    He said one of the issues recently is that over Christmas there are not any inspectors available to approve work as it moves forward.
    “They (contractors) said it is their intention to keep working through Christmas but there will be some challenges because you can’t cover up the work without it being inspected,” said Yemen.
    The Badlands Community Facility broke ground last fall as residents heard the piles being driven. Today the building has taken shape and is an impressive sight. This fall the cenotaph was relocated from Centennial Park behind the curling arena to the front of the building.
    To get that far however, has taken longer than anticipated. The original opening date was slated for August of 2011. This was pushed back to November and then finally December. Yemen said they would not publicly set a new date for opening.
     According to CAO Ray Romanetz, the construction of the facility is roughly $650,000 under budget at this time.

    On Tuesday, December 13, members of the Morrin School Students Against Drinking & Driving (SADD) Chapter held an event entitled, “White Out Day”.
    This event was the first the Chapter has held, as they have recently started up at the school.
    “White Out Day” is an event that is meant to provide a visual of just how many people are lost to drinking and driving throughout the course of a day. In North America, one life is lost every 23 minutes due to impaired driving (roughly 3 per hour).
    Students in Grades 7-12 volunteered to have their names put into a random draw to be selected to represent actual victims of impaired driving from all over North America.
    Throughout the course of the day, students were randomly selected every 23 minutes and their faces were painted white. As the event drew to a close, there were 16 students and teachers who represented lives lost to impaired driving.
    At the end of the day, students and staff were called into the gym to listen to the stories of the victims whom the randomly chosen “victims” were representing. 16 lives were lost, and they each had a different story to tell.