City mayors from throughout the province were in Estevan last week for the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association’s spring city mayors’ caucus.
Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig said the mayors from all cities were present, except for Meadow Lake and Martensville. They discussed common issues that will be taken to the provincial government.
“We talked about gangs, which are getting to be a common problem in our province. That took up some lengthy discussions, with how do we combat that. We talked about the drug issues that the province faces now with the increasing meth use.”
Among the other topics to be discussed was amalgamation of urban municipalities. It’s not something that would affect Estevan, Ludwig said, but it could happen in the Regina and Saskatoon areas, which have growing suburbs.
Similar concepts have been seen in Alberta and other provinces.
“It doesn’t really speak to that in the Cities’ Act, so that’s another thing we talked about potential changes to the Cities Act to reflect the changing times,” said Ludwig.
Mayors also talked about the potential formation of a provincial role similar to what municipal police forces in the province have in Bernie Eiswirth, who is the executive officer for the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers.
“He’s aware of all the issues in all of the communities, and it would be a lot easier for us if we had an individual who was aware of all the ongoing issues as well,” said Ludwig.
He believes the cities don’t communicate enough when it comes to negotiations with the police, which means they don’t do as good of a job as they could if they had all of the information in front of them.
Another meeting will take place in July to discuss the issue.
SUMA members passed a resolution advocating for the provincial government to implement a cannabis excise tax sharing agreement, since communities are responsible for controlling cannabis production, sales and consumption.
They want an agreement giving municipalities 33 per cent of total cannabis excise tax revenues collected in the province.
The cities were very supportive of Estevan’s efforts when it comes to economic development as the city prepares for Units 4 and 5 to come offline in the coming years.
SUMA will lobby the provincial government to work with the city to get more economic development in the area, which Ludwig said will be very important.
