Saskatoon Minute: Issue 121

Saskatoon Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Saskatoon politics

📅 This Week In Saskatoon: 📅

• On Tuesday, at 9:30 am, the Governance and Priorities Committee will meet, and among the items on its agenda is the Saskatoon Homelessness Action Plan 2026. The plan is a framework developed by the City together with the Saskatoon Tribal Council, Métis Nation-Saskatchewan and the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership, and Administration is asking the Committee to recommend that City Council receive it and reaffirm the leadership role and specific actions Council first approved in July 2025. The plan sets a goal of making homelessness "rare, brief and non-recurring" and identifies priorities including increasing the supply of affordable, supportive and transitional housing and reducing the number of people who fall into homelessness. It does not attach a dollar figure, stating that implementation will require capital, operating, data and staffing funding from multiple orders of government and that specific municipal costs will be brought forward through future budget requests. The City's own role is described as coordinating partners, supporting system planning, providing housing and land use support, and monitoring progress against performance indicators. Administration says development of the plan took longer than expected because of the multi-partner approach, and each partner is now presenting the finalized plan to its own governing body.
  
  
• Also on the Governance and Priorities Committee's Tuesday agenda is a report detailing how the Mayor and Councillors spent their communications and constituency relations allowances over the first half of 2026. Each Councillor is allotted $19,000 a year for expenses such as newsletters, advertising, event sponsorships and software, and together the ten Councillors spent $26,214.91 from January through June, out of a combined annual budget of $190,000. Mayor Cynthia Block has a separate $144,000 budget. The City posts the individual expenses on its website, and the next update, covering spending to the end of September, is due at the Committee's October meeting.
  
  
• The City of Saskatoon is spending $360,000 to plant two food forests in west-side parks as a pilot project aimed at food insecurity, with a federal infrastructure grant covering 60% of the cost and the City paying the rest. The plots, in Broughton Park in the Holiday Park neighbourhood and Leif Erickson Park in Westmount, are being planted with fruit trees, berries and vegetables including saskatoon berries, raspberries, apples, plums and asparagus, and were chosen because neither neighbourhood has a nearby grocery store. The City said two food forests will not solve food insecurity but could demonstrate one type of solution, and residents were consulted on what to grow. The sites will be weeded and watered for two years and are expected to open to the public in the spring of 2028, with the concept potentially expanded elsewhere if the pilot succeeds.
  
  
• A Saskatoon woman who hoped to reopen a licensed home daycare says the Province has told her it is no longer approving new regulated child care licences in her area, even as families report growing waitlists across the city. She previously ran a licensed daycare in River Heights with her mother and sister for about a year, applied in January to become a regulated home-based provider again and was told last month her application was on hold. In a letter dated June 23rd, the Ministry of Education said it is shifting from rapid expansion toward stabilization and long-term sustainability, prioritizing new spaces in areas of greatest need such as communities without $10-a-day child care and rural or northern areas. The Province says the application has not been rejected but is being held to allow further assessment of need in her neighbourhood, and that as of May 31st it had created 93% of the 28,000 child care spaces targeted in its 2023 agreement with the federal government. 
  
  
• The City of Saskatoon is removing a memorial tree at Woodlawn Cemetery after it tested positive for Dutch elm disease, and says the elm must come down immediately to stop the disease from spreading. The tree is part of the Memorial Avenue of Trees, a national historic site begun in 1923 to honour fallen soldiers, which has grown from 266 trees to about 1,200. The City said the positive test came early last week and that the tree will be replaced, though with a different species. Reported cases of Dutch elm disease have risen sharply in Saskatchewan in recent years, and a provincial pruning ban is in effect until August 31st to slow the spread. The City is asking residents not to store, transport, prune or burn elm wood, and to report any tree they suspect is infected.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

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