City council notes: Aug. 21 meeting

Here is a roundup of some items that came up at the Aug. 21 council meeting in North Battleford, the only one to take place for August. Council will resume its regular schedule in September.

The summer storms in July and August were a big part of the discussion Monday night, with a lot of questions about the terminology used to measure the amount of rain that fell with these storms.  

The July 21 rainstorm was described as a one-in-five year event; the Aug. 8 storm a one-in-25 year event.

City Manager Jim Puffalt noted that the storms seem to be happening more frequently; the one-in-20 storms seem to be happening at a one-in-five rate.

Director of utilities Stewart Schafer also said they are noticing rainfall intensities starting to increase, and noted the impact that will have on infrastructure.

“Climate change is a real thing now,” said Puffalt.

In announcements, Councillor Kent Lindgren confirmed he will be “trying to run” in the Walk a Mile In Her Shoes event on Sept. 7 to raise money in support of the Battlefords and Area Sexual Assault Centre.

The event will require the guys to walk a mile in high-heel shoes; Lindgren said a number of his counterparts at council will be participating as well. The event begins that day on 100th Street.  

The City of North Battleford has released its 2016 Public Accounts, as required by statute. That document will be made available on the city’s website at www.cityofnb.ca.

The building permits report for July has been presented. For July, 10 permits were issued for $113,200, down from 13 for $895,500 the previous year.

For the year, 75 permits have been issued for $15,989,125. That’s down five permits for the same period from 2016, but the overall values are ahead of last year by over $4 million.

Council passed a resolution giving permission to city administration to conduct a full structural assessment of the existing Saskatchewan Hospital reservoir, to determine whether it would be worth negotiating with the Saskatchewan government to purchase it.

The province had indicated they will not need the reservoir once the new Saskatchewan Hospital becomes operational. The city still uses the reservoir, however, to conduct backwashes for its filters and back flushing the river intake structure when it clogs up. The resolution on the reservoir carried unanimously. 

The city has awarded the residential waste collection contract to Loraas Environmental Services Inc.

They were one of four firms who responded to a request for proposal. Loraas was awarded the contract for a monthly cost per cart of $2.04, with a projected annual cost of $123,575.04 plus taxes based on a total of 5,048 rollout carts.

City council has passed a resolution to place the 2018 Saskatchewan Winter Games Legacy Piece in Rotary Plaza near the CUPlex.

The legacy piece, which is covered by the Games’ committee’s budget, will be a 3-D structure based on the Games’ “running man” logo, which will stand at approximately 6.6 feet high by 7 ft wide. It will display the levels of sponsorship donors and the intention is for it to be vandal-proof.

According to the city memo from Bill Samborski, director of leisure services, one reason the Rotary Plaza location was chosen was because of the great exposure potential at that location to potential visitors. The resolution to place the piece at Rotary Plaza carried unanimously.

Council has passed a resolution directing administration to proceed with preparing a bylaw to close and consolidate a number of undeveloped streets east of Territorial Drive.

Council has also passed a resolution regarding the industrial subdivision of Flax Ave. and Charolais Street, to authorize the city clerk and mayor to execute a private development and servicing agreement for road construction with Jim Pattison Developments Ltd. to construct a portion of Charolais Street.

Council has voted to proceed with a project to construct a 150 mm water main connection between Winder Crescent and Diefenbaker Drive to increase available fire flows at hydrants, as part of the 2017 UPAR construction. The cost is estimated at $60,000.

Council authorized a resolution to go ahead with a number of zoning bylaw housekeeping amendments, mainly wording and definition changes. Some of the changes include adding “farmers market” and “art studio” as permitted uses in the C1 zone downtown, adding “night club” in the C1 as a discretionary use, adding personal service shops as a permitted use in the C2 zone, and adding “crematorium” as a discretionary use in C3A and the M1 zone and as a permitted use in the M2, among others. 

That resolution was carried, which means the bylaw amendments will now be prepared, and will come back to council later on for approval.     

Finally, council approved a discretionary use application to permit a dwelling unit at 901-104th Street as part of the building. The building is currently zoned MU-Mixed Use District.

The next council meeting is Sept. 11, 2017.