Moose Jaw Independent

A look at COVID - 19 and the “promise” of 2021.

After dropping from seven to three active outbreaks over the past month there is now a new COVID - 19 outbreak declared in Moose Jaw and this time it is in an assisted living facility.

Presently three out of the four declared outbreaks are in facilities which house seniors and those with major health problems.

City employees recently held a raffle which helped adopt two families for Christmas as well as garner donations for a schwak or whole bunch of local non-profit groups.

Although this raffle and donations were announced about a week ago MJ Independent held the story back as something positive for Christmas Day.

It is a Holy Grail for local business development a business incubator in Moose Jaw.

Although a recent announcement may not be the big news many are looking for locally there is still opportunity for local tech development and more.

2020 may have been the year of the COVID - 19 pandemic but it was also the year of opportunity for a local entrepreneur and her partner as a new and innovative way they have designed for safely creating and storing digital memories is a tech highlight for the city.

Here is a good news story of taking a chance on a dream for Christmas Eve.

After voting just under two weeks ago to discontinue the regular Transit service on Saturdays effective February 1st Council decided to use their $20,000 travel budget to extend the service until May 1st.

Additionally Council will survey residents and businesses about the service and how to improve it and increase the ridership to make it less costly to subsidize. Such moves may mean the service is maintained in some form on Saturdays.

In what looked like it could be a disaster for the City’s invested reserve funds a market reversal has the City earning higher than targeted earnings in 2020 - some of the earnings are now earmarked to help fund the 2021 Budget.

A seemingly innocent policy change years ago on the ownership of the service connections to property owners was used partially as a reason to eliminate a long running program to subsidize the replacement of no corrode service connections.

It may have been a bad year but a Facebook group, with the help of anonymous donors, is once again doing its best to bring a little bit of happiness to people at Christmas.

Perhaps the bright light at the end of the tunnel that has been 2020 is that ordinary people care enough to lend a helping hand, a group administrator says.

As long as they can get funding approval from a Federal program a developer is planning on erecting 40 affordable housing units on part of the former Moose Jaw Union Hospital site.

Council agreed to a deal that will see SaskWater customers getting a water deal but at the same time the necessary work to the geo-thermal wells that supply Temple Gardens Mineral Spa got a much needed workover.