The Town of Nipawin won’t be contributing money to help fix Highway #255, which leads to the Resort Village of Tobin Lake.
Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator, said the discussion started with the town and three other municipalities, who wrote to the provincial government asking them to take action on the highway. The province did tell them that a tender will soon be out to recruit a contractor to fix the first 14.4 kilometres of the road in 2018.
“The province was wanting the municipalities to climb on board with some sort of a maintenance agreement with them so that the municipalities would share the cost of improvements to the remaining [8.3] kilometres and then have some sort of ongoing service agreement.”
Two of the other municipalities have already refused to contribute. Nipawin’s council was concerned how they could justify paying for a road outside of city limits.
“The reality of it is budgets are tight for all of the municipalities,” Elliott said. “As much as we would like to, it’s an expensive proposition.”
Regional fire fees changed
There’s been a change to the formula that determines how much local communities pay for regional firefighting services.
The old formula was based on a combination of a community’s total property assessment values and its population. That meant the Nipawin Regional Park, Wapiti Valley Regional Park and the Village of Love had small bills to pay – not enough to pay for the cost of a single fire call.
“Those three participants were paying a very, very minute amount as part of that formula, so what the group now has done has agreed that there will be a minimum fee of $3,600 annually,” Elliott said. “It’s just to put them in the ballpark of at least being able to cover the cost of one typical call.”
The change was approved by Nipawin council at its Nov. 14 meeting.
New MOU for airport
The Town and RM of Nipawin have signed a memorandum of understanding for how the airport will be operated.
“It provides clarity on which of the two municipalities is responsible for what,” Elliott said.
The RM has the airport within its boundaries. It will collect property taxes and be responsible for managing new developments.
The town, which owns the land, will collect airport fees and be responsible for administration and operations. It has a bylaw that lays out how the airport is run. Elliott said he expects there will be a discussion with an airport committee to determine if the bylaw needs to be reviewed and/or changed.
Other notes
The town has agreed to waive the water meter deposit and the water fee for the new Habitat for Humanity home until the occupant moves in and changes her water account to her new home.
Urban Systems Ltd. of Saskatoon was awarded the contract to develop the first phase of the town’s municipal asset management plan, which will take stock of assets like water and sewer mains, roads, and heavy equipment and develop a plan to maintain or replace them. The federal government requires the town make progress on the plan by March 31, 2018.
