YORKTON - A summer holiday Monday as the temperatures flirts with 30 on the plus side of things seems a pretty good opportunity to sit in front of a fan and just do a bit of speculating.
In this case what lies ahead for our city?
For years now, if not decades, there has been something of a dream, if not exactly an expectation, Yorkton would become a community of 20,000 if not 25,000. It was anticipated to have happened by now in some circles, but of course it has not, and frankly it is not something which is imminent either.
Population growth, while it has occurred provincially in recent years, finally climbing back over one million, much of that has settled in Regina or Saskatoon, or the bedroom communities around Saskatchewan’s two largest cities.
Now that growth in Yorkton has been modest at best, and slow in terms of year-over-year numbers.
That isn’t a bad thing in the sense the city is already struggling with infrastructure renewals – potholes abound as any drive through the city proves, and much of the city’s underground water and sewer lines are decades old meaning closer to end of useful life than current renewal really addresses. So a sudden influx in people would create a quandary as the city would need to pour funds into new subdivision creation.
Of course growth does increase the tax base over time which is a positive, and the new people in the community bolster retail sales and all the important spin-offs which come with that.
Much rumoured, even expected, and eventually quelled, developments of new potash mines – one south of the city near Duff, another in the Bredenbury/Churchbridge area, could have been the impetus of significant growth. Short of something as major it remains that growth locally will be minor.
That does come with a silver lining, that being that slow growth allows community planning for how we want the community to develop. It is an important undertaking which must be flexible as things today we expect will happen in years ahead will most certainly not turn out as imagined.
As an example, just think back a year – no one could have dreamed United States President Donald Trump would be the massively disruptive force in terms of world trade, and how that has rippled through Canada’s economy as Trump tariffs take effect. We can’t expect him to do anything but create greater turmoil for Canada and for his own country. That uncertainty will have an effect locally, creating issues in terms of planning what lies ahead.
Ultimately what Yorkton looks like in say a decade is very much an unknown, but we do have to have a vision of where we hope we are.
