At the District of Houston council meeting on Dec. 5, 2017 counsellor John Siebenga said that the Houston Public Library has expressed an interest to organize Winterfest in the future.
Winterfest was an annual week long event in Houston that brought the community together through activities and entertainment hosted by local businesses and organizations.
“The library would like to take over [the organization of Winterfest], but not at the scale it has been in the past,” said counsellor Siebenga. “They would like to do a weekend long event.”
Siebenga says that the library is excited to be doing something like that and hope that they can access some of the funds from the Commnity Health Education and Social Services committee.
“There also renovations going on at the library which staff is excited about,” said counsellor Siebenga. “New flooring and repainting is being done. There will be some times where the library will be closed that will be posted to inform the public.”
Counsellor Jonathan Van Barneveld said that he attended the Northwest Regional Hospital board meeting on a call-in, “they are starting to roll out advanced care paramedics around the province.”
According to counsellor Van Barneveld, advanced care paramedics have a higher leverl of training and are typically placed in larger centres like Prince George.
Counsellor Van Barneveld said that selected communities will be getting this service, but is not sure when Houston will be receiving it.
“I learned that there would be challenges to having them in rural communities because it would be tough for them to maintain their skills due to low call volume,” said counsellor Van Barneveld.
He added that long-term care bed modelling and activities are being assessed on a needs-based basis.
“No real new progress there for Houston, unfortunately,” said counsellor Van Barneveld.