City selling old snooker tables from the pre-flood Veiner Centre
By Collin Gallant on June 26, 2018.
Medicine Hat News Six snooker tables evacuated from the Veiner Centre five years ago this week could have new owners by the end of business on Tuesday. The tables appear on the Alberta Purchasing Connection, the procurement network where the province and Alberta’s local governments tender projects and dispose of surplus equipment. Typically, disposals are of a more substantial nature — the City of Medicine Hat is also selling a fire truck — but offering the games tables that are being replaced with new ones is a legal requirement. “We’re required to sell them because there is some residual value in them,” said Howard Snodgrass, the city’s general manager of community development. He says the process of taking apart and moving the tables, some dating from before the 1995 flood, had caused some wear and damage. They will be replaced by new ones with the reconstructed Veiner Centre opens this summer. They were moved into storage when the 2013 flooding swamped the seniors’ centre in the River Flats community. At the time, controversy arose when some centre members demanded to know their whereabouts, believing they had been left inside the building. Officials soon proved that, in fact, the shuffleboard tables had been left as flood waters rose, but the snooker tables were safe. Snodgrass also told the News an opening date for the expanded and renovated Veiner Centre could be announced next week. Bidding on the six, full-sized six-foot- by 12-foot snooker tables is set to conclude at 2 p.m. on June 26, after they were advertised on June 5. Interested parties can view the particulars at the Government’s “Purchasing Connection” website, which requires registration before offers can be made. Potential bidders can make offers for one or more of four tables that are complete and assembled. Two others are described as in pieces, with parts missing. Those are considered as a package. Sales will be considered as-is-where-is. 15-14
