A regular meeting of the Weyburn City Council was held on February 28; here are the major points of interest:
*Taxpayers will not be seeing an increase to their municipal taxes this year, thanks to increased funding from the Province and increased revenue from the growing city.
"No increase in our taxation resulted, mostly from two items: the growth in our assessment due to growth of our residential and business community and additional funding from the province with the Municipal Operating Grant," said City Manager Bob Smith during his presentation of the 2011 budget.
The City saw a 22 percent increase from the grant and an eight percent increase in tax revenue over last year.
The police department will receive a 5.1 percent increase in their operating budget in 2011 in order to increase traffic enforcement, presence in schools, foot and bike patrols and interaction with the public.
The fire department will see a 6.7 percent increase to purchase new equipment. A new fire rescue pumper truck and tanker pumper truck, worth a total of $630,000, will arrive in the city later this year.
Leisure Services will get a 6 percent increase in order to hire more staff at the Leisure Centre and increase funding for the Turner Curling Museum, Crescent Point Place and Southeast Regional Library.
The department of engineering, public works and parks will have a zero-increase to their budget, due to "in house" restructuring and finishing projects begun last year. Some of these projects include finalizing work at the primary lagoon and new sewage lift station, which is now operational. The City also plans to finalize the new soccer field at Jubilee Park.
New capital projects to begin this year include the creation of 77 new residential and multi-unit lots, extending the Boardwalk to the museum and installing new traffic lights at the intersection of Railway Avenue and Government Road.
Smith displayed a graph showing how municipal services are divided by the City: engineering, public works and parks - 35.3 percent or $2.9 million; leisure services - 28.1 percent or $1.59 million; police - 25.3 percent or $2.1 million; fire - $8.6 percent or $636,400; economic development - 2.7 percent or $230,000.
*Council approved a discretionary use permit to allow Zippy Mart to house the STC Bus terminal. Zippy Mart plans to renovate their current location to allow for the bus terminal and hopes to begin operating the new terminal in six to eight weeks.
Director of Engineering Rene Richard said that the City did have some concerns about the increased traffic potential at the intersection of First Avenue and 16th Street but has discussed their concerns with STC.
"We requested that they do not enter that service road by Zippy Mart from 16th Street," said Richard. "The buses will enter from 18th Street off of the highway, turn around on their own property, exit east on the service road to the outskirts of town rather than clog up our intersection."
Richard also assured Council that STC will be offloading passengers on Zippy Mart property, not City streets.
