The mayors of Saskatchewan's cities met for the first time after this fall's municipal elections, and they had one major concern on their minds. The Saskatchewan City Mayor's Caucus was all about infrastructure, how to repair what's crumbling and prepare for growth.
Yorkton Mayor Bob Maloney attended the caucus for the first time this year. He says the chance to meet with his counterparts in other cities is useful, especially given there are similar problems are from border to border.
"It's a good opportunity to get together and discuss issues, because our issues are largely the same. We've all got cities that are growing, and we've got all of the problems that go along with that, basically infrastructure and keeping up with growth," he says.
The problems with infrastructure are common throughout the province, with most cities having infrastructure that was largely installed in the 1960s, explains Maloney. Now, especially with the demands of growth, cities are looking to find ways to deal with those problems.
"In Yorkton not too long ago we were talking about sidewalks that are on a 300 year replacement schedule. Well, a sidewalk is not going to last 300 years so you have to move ahead and do more maintenance and upkeep. I think that's the situation cities find ourselves in, we've got some very expensive infrastructure to maintain and it's costing us a lot of money."
Given the consistency of problems faced by Saskatchewan's cities, Maloney says one of the useful parts of the caucus is just learning what's happening elsewhere in the province, since if something works elsewhere, it could work in Yorkton, and vice versa.
"I talked to people about development fees, and our fees are far lower than they are in Weyburn and Estevan. It's something we're reviewing, and it's a cost of doing business when people come to our community and have to pay those development fees but I think it's something when you get together with other mayors you can talk about."
He also says that the development of landfills is another area which a lot of cities are dealing with, and he notes that the province might begin to push RMs and cities to work together on landfill development, as well as other areas.
"I do think that as communities we do need to work together to provide services and do infrastructure work that benefits everybody," Maloney says.
As well as having common problems, the mayors had the opportunity to meet with the Provincial Cabinet and discuss the role cities play in the province's growth. Maloney says that the cities are meeting with SARM to review revenue sharing, and how money should flow based on population to the cities, and in their meeting with cabinet they discussed the challenges that growth is bringing.
"I think the province has done a terrific job in funding cities, we've had a really good municipal operating grant system that the province has brought in that's the envy of many cities across the country, and we're very grateful for that... But as time goes on, we're finding that the demands on services and other things in the cities are demanding more of us. We're hopeful that as revenue grows in the province we're able to address these things, and again negotiating with SARM to make sure the money which is distributed is distributed to everybody," Maloney says.
"We feel as cities that any growth in funding should follow the population. I think over 82 per cent of residents are either living in cities, villages or towns and so when you look at those numbers we would like to see the funding follow that population. A lot of what we do is providing services, so when you're providing services to people we would like to see funding follow that population growth."
Maloney says that when people move to cities they don't bring immediate direct benefits, since most of the tax revenue goes to the Provincial and Federal Governments, rather than municipal governments. While he emphasizes that growth is welcome and cities have done well under the current regime, the cities' main concern is that funding is not currently on a per capita basis.
The Caucus also elected their chair and vice-chair of the caucus, with Malcolm Eaton of Humboldt being voted as chair and Jerrod Schafer of Swift Current voted vice-chair.
Overall, Maloney says that the City Mayors Caucus meeting was productive and useful for gauging the concerns of cities and getting the Government of Saskatchewan aware of the issues being faced by the different mayors.
