Murray Wood: When football is just a game
There is extra anticipation around the Roughriders' first-place showdown with the Elks tonight. Murray Wood says everyon...
A presentation to Regina’s executive committee updating the city’s parks master plan on Wednesday turned into a lengthy discussion on the impact of a cut to park maintenance made during budget deliberations.
“I have people screaming at me every day about the damn weeds,” Ward 7 Councillor Shobna Radons said during the meeting.
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She’s not the only one getting complaints. Deputy city manager Deborah Bryden said requests to Service Regina related to the parks and open spaces department jumped from 3,877 for all of last year to 4,785 so far this year.
“Going forward with the next round of budget deliberations, I think we need to be cognizant about what we want and understanding how it affects our residents,” Radons said.
The changes resulted from one item in a package of cuts introduced during budget deliberations by Mayor Chad Bachynski that cut $2.1 million from the parks and open spaces department’s budget request. Parks director Russell Eirich says that resulted in a 15 per cent reduction in park maintenance.
“We had a very tough budget that we went through last year,” Bachynski told reporters.
“I worked very closely with admin to look at what are options to try and be creative in the way we deliver those services, and parks was one of those areas, and a lot of that was around reclassifying park spaces and how we treat those.
“What we heard today was some of that has gone well. We’ve seen some successes there. But there’s some areas – for example, some of the not-official field spaces that people use for soccer and otherwise – maybe didn’t hit the mark for our residents’ expectations.”
During the discussion, it was revealed nine city-owned mowers are sitting idle, and if the funding cuts aren’t restored, they will eventually be sold.
Ward 10 Councillor Clark Bezo asked what it would take to hire nine students to operate those mowers for the remainder of the summer, but was told it normally takes months to recruit summer student employees, followed by a few weeks of training. He was also told that their employment typically winds up at the end of August, so it’s likely too late for that to be an option this year.
“There were some operational service cuts that we approved that went a little too deep for weed and grass control,” Bezo concluded, adding he might consider a motion rescinding previous direction from council against the use of herbicides.
Bachynski said he expects council has learned from the process, and may take the concerns raised into account during the next budget deliberations, which begin with the first informational meeting on Tuesday.
“I’ve heard loud and clear that there’s an expectation to review that, and my commitment is that I want to review that when we look at the budget this year, to see where we can adjust to meet the mark,” the mayor said.
Radons said she hopes her council colleagues will take the feedback to heart.
“It’s a little bit frustrating, because here we are today talking about, now, reactively responding to the darn weeds,” she said.
“I think, when we’re talking about these things during budget, let’s just be careful about what we want to cut and how many pennies it costs each resident.”
