Thank you for your patience while the Town has addressed a gap in guidance around temporary AHS regulations until November 27th with respect to ‘metropolitan area enhanced’, ‘enhanced’ and ‘open’ measure areas. As you may be aware, Nanton, as part of the Willow Creek Region for COVID status maps, was moved from ‘open’ to ‘enhanced’ status yesterday, further changing the landscape.
For the time being, given Nanton’s current situation and proximity to a significant group of ‘enhanced’ communities (some that are metropolitan as per AHS standards) with close ties to the arena, the Tom Hornecker Recreation Centre will remain open to non-metropolitan ‘enhanced’ or ‘open’ teams, clubs and user groups and will leave accountability for the participation of enhanced measure zone residents and groups on participating teams to their clubs and associations.
• Foothills County is considered part of the Calgary metropolitan zone for enhanced measures meaning that the continued participation of persons from that area in particular poses potential risks for clubs and associations that should be duly considered. It is not encouraged.
• Until the expiry of the temporary regulations, we are honouring existing local team/club/user booking and rental arrangements. For any new request considerations, we need to know the name of the head coach and the name of the team/ group/club and full contact details to give it any consideration during this period.
The Town has little desire to police this situation for your organizations and will only do so with great reluctance if circumstances further change. With that in mind, it is important to consider that both AHS and Alberta Emergency Management (AEMA) are strongly recommending that individuals not play if it involves travelling from any enhanced status community or zone to an ‘open’ or other enhanced zone. Hockey Alberta have interpreted the matter, from their perspective, as follows:
Can players, coaches or officials that reside in a community with additional measures (Ban on indoor group fitness classes & team sports) participate in hockey activities in a community that does not have additional health measures?
- Individuals are to follow the guidelines and restrictions for the community in which they live and should not be travelling from affected communities to non-affected communities at this time.
We all wish that the language on these regulations was clearer, but this is what we have for the present time. Please ensure that you are communicating with parent organizations and obtaining guidance that protects you and your clubs as well as the community.
Thanks again and we look forward to continue providing arena service to you for as long as we can. That is best achieved by ensuring that we see a decline in COVID-19 statics generally in the near future.
Chief Administrative Officer