“When we have a plan we run it through the local health board and they help us tweek it because we have to plan the entrance and egress of each group, the timing of such, keeping in mind the total capacity in the building.”
“I know it seems long ways away but when COVID hit we shut the arenas down, we redeployed staff to parks and public works and the water department, so we’ve lived on four maintenance staff all summer long. That’s part of the challenge we’ve had trying to plan for the fall.
We committed our staff out of the department.”
He points out there are a lot more fine details than the public realizes. “There’s so many little variables that don’t follow the initial usage, which is the hard part for us.”
“Coming to play hockey with a team. Even though you’re wearing a mask, but we still require two metre distancing. A dressing room that normally holds 30 people holds 11 people now.”
He adds, “Those are the challenges that we’re going to be facing. If we get too many people in the building then the city’s on the hook for breaking the rules and is subject to provincial offences if they (the province) decide to go that direction.”
Lyng hopes the Sports Centre will be a leader in the pandemic opening.
“We do have some pretty stringent and ambitious goals we’re going to try and reach, but we do not want to be an epicentre for an outbreak or anything like that.”
The opening of the swimming pool is next on the opening list.
