As this is written we are on the eve of yet another new year, which always leads to looking ahead to what might be coming to Yorkton.
Often there are major things to look forward to, but in the case of 2015 it appears a rather status quo, hold the line lies ahead for our city.
That is certainly the vision of Mayor Bob Maloney in the annual year-end interview with Yorkton This Week (see Page A3 this issue).
There are several reasons for the year ahead to be similar to the one just ending.
To start with the City is committed on a couple of ongoing projects which means there will not be a lot of free dollars to undertake anything major that is new.
Maloney touched on that when discussing how the investment in storm water infrastructure paid dividends with the extreme rains this summer.
The program of retention ponds, drainage ditches and new underground piping in some areas was always designed as a multi-year investment, and with severe weather now seemingly more the norm, the City is not going to veer away from continuing that project.
While there are some larger projects the City would like to undertake, a complete redo of Broadway Street, the infrastructure under the ground, and the asphalt surface, the $50 million price tag will keep plans shelved unless the provincial and federal governments come to the table with unexpected dollars.
Away from City Hall it is much the same.
We will see the opening of the Parkland College Trades & Technology Centre now under construction, which is a big thing for the region, but is also a project which has been ongoing for some time now.
The much discussed new hospital, while having a study in place regarding what it might look like, it is not likely to move even an inch closer to reality.
There are simply other priorities the provincial government will wish to pursue which means a new hospital here is likely a number of years away. In fact, it is likely far enough away that the groundwork done will be obsolete long before sod is turned.
And of course that is without the issue of just how the local 20 per cent of such a project might be financed.
As for population and business growth, it will likely be steady at its best.
The likelihood of a new potash mine, which had seemed so certain only a couple of years ago, is now a ‘maybe in the next decade’ development, and that delay has to calm expansion in Yorkton.
And so we continue on a road which has seen our city grow, but not to such an extent we have had to deal with the issues which a major boom can cause, which truly isn’t such a bad thing as we look toward 2015.
