With their funding source cut off on March 31, the process of winding down the business of the Saskatchewan Â鶹´«Ã½AVeast Enterprise Region (SSEER) will begin on the evening of April 17 with a membership meeting in the Stoughton Legion Hall.
"The board can't wind it down, it has to be done through a membership vote," said SSEER chairman Tim Schroh of Estevan.
When the provincial budget came down a couple of weeks ago, it contained the news that the still fledging Enterprise Saskatchewan experiment was ending, at least from a provincial partnership perspective, the result of which would probably be a death knell for all or most of the 16 regional enterprise operations throughout the province.
The $250,000 that had been assigned to the southeast sector represented pretty well all of the funding for the local regional operations, said Schroh, so he figured the membership will probably see the need to dissolve their operations once they get together.
"We'll talk about the processes we can use to do that. There's a little bit left in the bank so we can have a reasonable wind down, but we can't carry on, at least not in the current form," Schroh added.
The chairman said the members will need to discuss the dispersal of the physical assets such as office furniture and equipment as well as the intellectual properties that had been gathered in the form of business surveys and economic development information which could be of benefit to other agencies.
Whether the April 17 meeting will provide the impetus for the formation of another regional economic development model is anybody's guess, Schroh said. "But SSEER will have to end."
SSEER's executive director Edie Spagrud will probably attend the meeting to provide information regarding operational questions the members and directors might have. It is expected that the wind- down in the southeast could take two to three months to complete and that will have to include a final audit and storage arrangements for the records and the cancellation of any long-standing contracts SSEER might have regarding equipment or building leases.
Schroh said most of the SSEER board and members have been involved in related organizations in the past such as Community Futures, regional economic development committees and chambers of commerce so he expected there would be some discussion as to what the next steps might entail in terms of keeping development in southeast Saskatchewan on the front burner, especially since there has been unprecedented business and population growth in the region during the past few years.
