Municipalities across the province are always looking for ways to get the most out of their taxpayer dollars. That's part of the goal behind the Leveraged Municipal Innovation Fund (LMIF), co-funded by the province's major municipalities and Communities of Tomorrow, a public-private partnership with the objective of positioning Saskatchewan as a leader in the field of municipal infrastructure. The LMIF recently announced the five priorities for its first year.
The initiative brings together fifteen municipalities, including Estevan, Humboldt, Kindersley, Martensville, Meadow Lake, Melfort, Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, Swift Current, Weyburn and Yorkton.
The five priorities are developing improved roadway pavement materials and maintenance practices for pothole repairs, creating new guidelines for recycling asphalt pavement in new mixes, creating new guidelines for winter sanding and salt, and investigating best materials for road sanding, exploring unconventional uses for wastewater treatment plant sludge and developing specifications and guidelines for management of melt water and contaminants from snow dump sites.
Yorkton will be taking the lead on the melt water and contaminant from snow dump sites project. Michael Zaplitny with Communities of Tomorrow says that this project will involve examining the regulations in the province and the practices in place, and looking for the best practices and guidelines.
Zaplitny also says the priorities for the fund came from the municipalities themselves, with a focus being on issues which are important across the province.
"Those municipalities put up $150,000 to create the fund, and our organization matched that... We asked them in a series of meetings what are the most important things this fund can do for them, and that's where these study areas came from," he notes.
"We are trying to focus these projects on very real world solutions. So if we put a report together and bring it to municipalities, they are going to have some real world recommendations to act on."
The goal of the group is to allow municipalities to work together and find common solutions to common problems, and save money by allowing these projects to be shared among many partners.
"It's very difficult for each municipality on its own to have staff committed, and have money committed to do this kind of work. That's what we exist for, to create collaboration, networking and sharing of information. There's a power in the group that doesn't exist for individual municipalities," Zaplitny notes.
He projects that this first series of projects will take six months to a year, which he admits is a short time frame for doing research. He says this is the most focused group of studies which Communties of Tomorrow has done, and it has seen a high level of interest from Saskatchewan municipalities. The organization has been around since 2003 and has contributed to many projects across the province, and Zaplitny says this new project is one that is exciting for municipalities province-wide.
"Infrastructure is a continuing challenge for all municipalities everywhere. There's never enough money to do what needs to be done, and what we have here is a group of municipalities who recognize that what we need to look for is a new way to do things, and the reason to look for a new way is to get better value for taxpayers," he concludes.
