The problems with growth are among of the key issues for cities in the province. At the recent SUMA convention, Saskatchewan cities agreed on three main issues and communicated their needs to the province. Yorkton Councillor Ross Fisher attended the event, and says the cities reached a consensus in three areas, housing, infrastructure and recycling.
One of the big issues of the conference was housing, and Fisher notes that a lack of housing is a problem which all cities are encountering.
"I think it's important that we're able to show to the provincial government that there is a consensus of that being the number one issue. Certainly we all want to see the province grow, and if you have a shortage of housing across the province it becomes an impediment," Fisher says.
That consensus was met with an announcement of an upcoming housing plan, to be introduced in June of this year. Fisher says municipalities have had a good chance to talk to the minister responsible for housing, and different cities talked about what works, and what does not, in their areas.
"I think we all had some good input. Hopefully the minister takes that into account when they come up with the plan that they say they will have in place for June, which we are all anxiously looking for in the summer, because we need growth, and we want to see the investment in housing in our communities," Fisher says.
Growth affects more than housing, and Fisher says that infrastructure needs to be upgraded in order to handle the influx of people moving to the province. While no action plan was addressed, the problems of infrastructure were identified at the conference.
"It's an issue because most of our cities were started years ago when we were smaller, and the demands on our infrastructure were not quite as high. You're seeing it's an issue across the country, where communities have an aging infrastructure, or an infrastructure that was made for a much smaller population.
The issue is how do you deal with the modernizing and upgrading of infrastructure that you have for the size of city that you have today. Certainly in all of the new developments that we are doing here, we're building with that in mind, but we have older parts of the city, and so do other communities," Fisher says.
Recognizing that infrastructure is an issue is the first step in addressing the problem, Fisher notes, and the cities are trying to get the government's help in dealing with the problem.
When it comes to recycling, Yorkton is ahead of many other cities in the province, as a curbside recycling program is already in place. Fisher notes that some other cities are hoping for a greater provincial involvement to get curbside recycling programs off the ground.
"From our point of view, the key thing is that recycling is a good program, and it works well here, and it should probably work well in other places. The province should probably take a lead in trying to move people to recycle more," Fisher says.
The conference was about confronting the issues the province is seeing before they become too serious, Fisher notes.
"If we weren't having the growth and we weren't having people move back to the province for jobs, some of these wouldn't be issues. So, they're good issues, but they're also issues that could cause us problems down the road if we don't deal with them now and plan for them, and that's what we're trying to do," Fisher concludes.
