OUTLOOK - The town council of Outlook met for a regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday night, June 22. Present was all of Council; Bob Stephenson, Sharon Bruce, Kyle McLeod, Ryan Husband, Justin Turton, and Kevin Grotheim, as well as Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Trew and Municipal Office Clerk Crystal Fisher. Absent was Mayor Maureen Weiterman, and in her place chairing the meeting was Councillor Grotheim.
The meeting was broadcast on the Town of Outlook Facebook page.
A number of topics and items were discussed, including the following highlights.
CAO Report - Dated June 22
Prepared by Chief Administrative Officer
Kevin Trew
Human Resources:
- We awarded the Town Hall Complex Janitorial Tender to Trudy Turnbull of Prairie Girl Cleaners – her company started June 15, 2022.
- On June 23 we are closing the office for an all-staff in-service on customer service. The workshop is a certificate course put on by Tourism Saskatchewan and it is called Service Best. I have been involved in delivery of this workshop and similar ones before, I am confident that each team member will have at least 1 positive takeaway from it.
- We have a full complement of summer staff at the pool.
- Plans are now underway for recruitment of individuals for the Recplex for the fall (both permanent and seasonal employees) – Crystal and Megan are working on reorganization of duties for the fall with different job descriptions to present to Council once they are ready.
Policy and Procedural Items:
- The Draft Audited Financial Statements is presented to Council for approval at the June 22 meeting of Council.
- Tax notices were sent out right at the end of May once the rates were approved by Council at the May 25 meeting. While there have been some questions of taxpayers who made pre-payments and are seeing additional charges, this has rolled out rather smoothly.
- Operations Budget and Capital Budget adjustments were made at the June 8 meeting of Council.
Successes this Month:
- We have seen a lot of progress on the Railyard Subdivision this month with Acadia coming in and performing some of the fixes that were required after their work last fall and Saskenergy beginning to service the 13 lots. Saskpower will be soon to follow suit. We also present Council with tax incentives and a draft Commercial and/or Industrial Land Sales Policy.
Learning Opportunities/Capacity Development:
- Landfill scale software for new billing – We expect the scale and software to be in use in June and then we will roll out the new rates for customers through the summer with them coming into effect September 1. We are preparing more information for Council regarding contracted garbage pick up and transportation as well as a new landfill bylaw incorporating fees to other interested municipalities and allowing users from outside of the Town of Outlook.
We have still not seen a signed user agreement with the Rudy Landing Utility as we continue to invoice these users direct.
Current Unfinished Projects:
- Highway Water, Sewer and Storm Water Replacement – we have received a report from Associated Engineering regarding completing this work over two phases, the recommendation is that we do the water line replacement and fire hydrants on the remainder of Saskatchewan Avenue in 2022 and proceed with sanitary sewer and storm water replacement in 2023 as budgeted.
Storm Water Outfalls rehabilitation will be complete in 2022 – Associated Engineering has just completed the tender for this and I expect a report in the coming days.
Landfill Decommissioning of Old Cell – Machibroda is testing dirt from 3 sites around Outlook to ensure we have the correct cover as necessary; once we receive the results, we expect to go to tender with this project.
Raw Water Intake/ Water Treatment Plant Upgrade Project – This project continues along, we have met with the owner of the land where one test site was proposed and that owner does not wish for his land to be a part of this project, so we will focus on the other two sites.
Subdivisions Projects:
- Railway Commercial/Industrial – Pricing has been set for the 13 lots established, we have completed Zoning and Land Purchase Agreements as well as business tax incentives and requirements to develop prior to final sale; those who have expressed interest in purchase have been emailed information, anyone else interested is invited to contact the CAO direct at cao.outlook@sasktel.net; we expect public sale to be advertised very soon.
- Highway Commercial – We went through the traffic impact assessment with the Ministry of Highways and have looked at pricing for changes required. Associated Engineering has been contacted for a quote regarding project management. We still await that quote.
- Residential – Nothing new to report at this time. We are looking at Development of the College South Subdivision as well as residences along Mann Street.
- New Zoning Bylaw – Urban Systems has been contracted to help us with a new Zoning Bylaw, we still await the timeline.
Future Projects:
- Application has been made to both higher levels of government for two projects under the recreation stream of ICIP:
- On behalf of the RMs of Fertile Valley and Rudy and ourselves, a regional project – Sports Ground Upgrade,– we were denied on the first iteration of this funding stream; we await news of the second call, whether we will receive this.
- Skytrail CP Rail Bridge Rehabilitation – this was not approved under the ICIP stream for recreation, we await another call for applications from the Expand Public Transit fund which is a federally funded grant.
Bylaws
There was further discussion had on Bylaw 10(2022) Fire Pit, and it was said that many in the public may have been unaware that this bylaw has actually been in existence in 2019. There were plenty of opinions on it that were shared, notably to do with the 11:00 pm time stamp of when fires must be put out. Council was asked what direction they wanted to go with the bylaw, including whether the time element should be removed for now, pending further discussion. There has also been feedback gathered from some in the community that the fire pit bylaw and the noise bylaw don't necessarily need to be in-sync with each other.
"I had two different people that have reached out to me to talk from their perspective," said Administrator Trew. "One person stated that they often have teenage children who are participating in fire pits in their home, maybe having a get-together, and that they would much rather have teenagers in their yard at a fire than roaming around the streets of Outlook or further beyond. The other person that reached out to me stated that they just felt that the noise bylaw hours made sense, but that really, why should there be any time of day that a fire would not be allowed?"
A motion was made for the third reading, which was carried, with the removal of the time element.
Reports of Administration, Staff and/or Committees Requiring Decision
Earlier that day, the Outlook/Rudy Joint Protective Services Committee had met, with one of the topics of discussion being a rescue van. A tender was put out asking for bids on a new rescue vehicle for the Joint Protective Services Committee. Four tenders were received and the committee reviewed all of them. The recommendation to both town and RM councils was that the tender be awarded to Delisle-based OTEX Manufacturing for the amount of $221,354.67. The motion was made and carried to move forward on that recommendation.
Unfinished Business
In discussing the preliminary design related to the replacement of highway water and sewer, it was explained that water mains of McKenzie Street South and 150 meters of Saskatchewan Avenue were completed in 2015 and 2016. The sewer mains, as well as individual sewer services are mostly original and have been starting to fail. Some services have been replaced, but it's said that the mains of many services should be replaced in the next 5-10 years. There is also some key storm sewer infrastructure that should be replaced soon.
The Town worked with Associated Engineering to prepare a preliminary design for work that is to be carried out, and the recommendation is to carry the work out in two phases, with Phase 1 being the completion of the water mains with open trench excavation and other associated work, at an estimated cost of $2,000,000. That work would commence in 2022. From there, work at approximately the same cost will continue in order to complete the sanitary sewer pipelining along with storm sewer improvements in 2023. The recommended resolution was that Council accept the preliminary design and that they also approve Associated Engineering to continue with design and tendering of the project.
A motion was made to accept the design and move forward in tendering of the project.
New Business
Council went through a draft of the 2021 audited financial statement, which among the highlights showed that the town's financial asset line has increased from approximately $5.9 million to $6.34 million. After some further discussion was had, a motion was made and carried to accept the draft statement.
As well, a motion was made to approve a non-arm's length payment to Councillor Bruce.
