Murray Wood: Who's scary... and who's scary good?
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week, in a specia...
Regina’s debt limit could be getting a boost.
During its meeting Wednesday, city council voted 7-3 in favour of pushing the debt limit from $450 million to $780 million. Councillors voting against were Cheryl Stadnichuk, Shanon Zachidniak and Andrew Stevens.
The city wants more flexibility to pay for big projects without damaging its credit. Debt is currently inching closer to the limit at $437 million.
“Increasing our debt limit does not mean that our debt grows,” said Barry Lacey, executive director of Financial Strategy and Sustainability. “It provides council that flexibility in the future to take on debt if it deems that it is a priority for the city to do so.”
Many catalyst committee projects have had big price tags attached, some of them being a new pool and a new arena.
In order to meet federal grant timelines for these projects, this could cause some hefty bills to be paid in the near future.
“When we were looking at the list of capital projects — from water to wastewater to storm water issues as well as the infrastructure in the ground and then replacement of aged facilities — it just made some sense,” Mayor Sandra Masters said on the Greg Morgan Morning Show.
“We could have started smaller, but to provide that flexibility for the next 10 or 15 years is warranted. We’re looking to put it in place, frankly, so that we have the flexibility to seize funding opportunities, third-party funding opportunities, as they become available. ”
The proposal will now go to the Saskatchewan Municipal Board for approval.
One of those projects with a big price tag was the Eastern Pressure Solution Project, which was approved for a funding increase of $53.06 million to a total budget of $162.11 million.
This project would improve water pressure in eastern areas of the city, where the pumps are not strong enough to reach.
Water pressure in the winter typically was not a problem, but with more lawn and plant watering, an effective flow of water is an issue for residents in the summer months.
Vote on Stevens
Stevens isn’t being censured or reprimanded for sharing a confidential report with his council colleagues.
Stevens says he accidentally hit “reply all” when replying to an email, making the report pop up in a bunch of inboxes.
Council voted 7-1 in favour of not disciplining Stevens during Wednesday’s meeting, with Masters as the sole dissenting vote.
“Obviously I support their decision,” Stevens said. “I think they saw what really happened, which was an error in terms of their interpretation of the code and a mistake on my part, which I totally admit was silly and foolish and quite expensive.”
Stevens said he hopes council can move on.
“We need to work together,” Stevens said. “We don’t have to like each other.”
He also says he wants to put this in the rearview mirror and is willing work with anyone.
“What I learned very quickly in this job is you don’t get elected to hang out with your friends,” he said. “You get elected because you have constituents who are advancing a particular candidate to city council. You don’t have a choice.”
Masters said she voted to sanction Stevens because it was the same way she voted in the fall after the integrity commissioner issued a report about comments made by Coun. Terina Nelson.
“I was one of those dissenting thinking that we should agree with the integrity commissioner’s recommendations, so I voted the exact same way for Coun. Stevens,” Masters said.
“Overall, though, council wants to move on. We’re doing a lot of good work. We’ve done quite a lot of work since Jan. 1 of this year and we just want to continue on that.”
