The City of Weyburn came through the year of COVID with health and strength for the most part, and residents and business owners can look forward to a new year with some positivity, said Mayor Marcel Roy in a year-end interview.
“2020 was a rough, rough year for a lot of people. I think we’re going to be coming out of it,” he said. “We’ve done well, we’ve weathered the storm.”
The mayor noted that when the COVID lockdowns came on in March, the oilfield in the southeast had already slowed down a lot, and some restaurants haven’t done as well as they normally would have, but Weyburn wasn’t as badly hit as many other areas of the province were.
“It’s definitely impacted the way we operate. City hall is open by appointment only, and we’re moving back to Zoom for council meetings for the next while. It has an impact on what we’re doing,” he said.
This past year has seen a lot of new faces come on board for staff, with new HR and public works staff, a new police chief with Jamie Blunden coming to Weyburn from Winnipeg, and a new deputy chief, Brent VanDeSype, recently being appointed, along with a new city engineer also.
The city has also benefitted from 1,800 new LED street lights which were installed this year, which will save a lot on power consumption as well as making the streets brighter.
The mayor paid tribute to the Weyburn Chamber of Commerce in helping the local business community through COVID and keeping local retailers going, as well as the job Weyburn Tourism has done in promoting the River Park Sparkles and the Home Sparkles Tour this Christmas season.
The City has been able to work on a number of infrastructure projects this year also, said Mayor Roy, such as the ongoing work on the Works Department’s new equipment storage building, and he added, “We’re looking forward to a number of projects in the coming year, such as the new community centre. Once we get that taken care of we’ll have a good pathway to the future.”
One of the infrastructure projects will be to rebuild the lift station on 13th Street, along with normal maintenance projects such as tree pruning by the Parks department.
Some of the projects for 2021 will need to be finalized in the budget discussions, noted the mayor, and the budget itself will come to council at their first meeting in January.
“We would have liked to have it by the end of December, but because of COVID, we’ve had kind of a delay on some things,” said Mayor Roy.
The municipal election was held this year, and there was a lot of interest in it with a large number of candidates on the ballot.
“The election was a positive thing for Weyburn, and we saw the RM get some new candidates also,” he said. “We’re looking forward to the next four years with a good positive partnership with the RM of Weyburn.”
Looking to the coming months of the new year, Mayor Roy said as a city they will continue to work with the province in cooperating with the COVID regulations, “so we can hopefully get back to normal as soon as possible. We’ve got low case counts in this area, so that’s good.”
The mayor said he has a positive attitude about the coming year in spite of 2020 being a rough year, and predicts the city will come out of this year in good shape.
