Yorkton Mayor Aaron Kienle attended last week’s unveiling of the latest provincial budget in Regina but said the document didn’t offer a great deal in terms of ‘new’ for Yorkton.
“It’s always a tough one,” he told Grasslands News, adding one goes into such things “with high expectations,” which admittedly are often beyond reasonable.
That said, there were a couple of things Kienle said he takes as headed in the right direction.
“I was happy to see something about the Yorkton hospital was put in there (the budget),” he said. “. . . I’m thankful that it’s in there.”
Getting a budget mention suggests the long awaited new regional hospital remains on the governments ‘to-build’ list, said Kienle.
However, he added there is some frustration the facility remains in the pre-design phase with $1.8 million allocated for that with no indication when the hospital might be built.
Locally, Kienle said a capital funding committee is about to be struck with members of Council, the local Health Foundation and the Saskatchewan Health Authority to be the local liaison group for whatever comes next for the hospital.
The other good news out of the budget was more money flowing to municipalities from a revenue sharing formula based on Provincial Sales Tax revenues.
While noting more money for municipalities is welcomed, Kienle said that PST revenue is up; is likely, at least in part, because what residents buy has gone up so then so is the sales tax, which reflects a higher cost of goods and services people must deal with.
Kienle said that he of course travelled to Regina for a firsthand hearing of the budget being presented as it was also an opportunity to talk to government representatives directly about Yorkton needs.
“I spoke to nine, or 10 ministers and a few additional MLAs building that relationship,” he said.
Of course, the need for a new hospital was part of those talks, but so too was the impending need to build a new wastewater treatment plant, said Kienle.
The new plant will cost millions, and the city is lobbying for dollars from both senior levels of government, because the new plant is needed not to service residents – Kienle said the existing facility can do that – but to service industry such as the canola crush processors. To service the existing processing at their peak is putting pressure on the facility it can’t handle, without factoring in what happens if another processor had interest in building in the city. Kienle said the city doesn’t want to face turning down a project that would be good for the region and province because the treatment facility is inadequate.
