Saskatoon Minute: Issue 123

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

📅 This Week In Saskatoon: 📅

• The Standing Policy Committee on Environment, Utilities and Corporate Services will meet tomorrow at 9:30 am, and one of the items on the agenda is the City's new Climate Action Strategy, a 25-year framework that would replace both the Low Emissions Community Plan and the Corporate Climate Adaptation Strategy. The strategy has three components: a playbook aimed at reaching net-zero carbon pollution by 2050, a playbook to prepare the community for climate impacts, and a guide for what the City calls a just transition, built on principles of equity, reconciliation, prosperity, and miyo-pimâtisiwin, meaning the good life. Proposed actions include installing 50 megawatts of solar generation on civic lands and buildings by 2035, electrifying the City's light-duty fleet, and adopting higher energy efficiency standards for new construction. Approving the strategy would not itself commit any money, as each initiative would be brought forward individually through future budget deliberations. If the Committee agrees, the strategy goes to City Council for final approval.
  
  
• Also tomorrow, the Standing Policy Committee on Transportation meets at 2:00 pm, and among the items on the agenda is a request to let Administration tender road and sidewalk repair contracts before the money for them has been approved. Under the recommended option, up to 60% of the anticipated 2027 and 2028 roadway and sidewalk preservation budgets, roughly $27.6 million a year based on the 2026 budget, could be put to market and awarded ahead of City Council's budget deliberations as a two-year pilot. Administration argues that waiting for budget approval in late November or early December, followed by a 12-week procurement process, pushes construction starts to between late April and June and compresses the construction season. The contracting industry has asked for earlier tendering, saying it would let companies plan, secure materials and equipment, and bid more competitively. The report acknowledges the approach could leave the City with binding contractual commitments before a budget is passed, and says that if funding were later cut below committed levels, Administration would need to adjust reserves, reallocate capital funds, or borrow.
  
  
• The City Auditor has found Saskatoon's street sweeping program is generally well run, but that contractor billing goes largely unverified. The audit of the 2025 program, which will be presented to the Standing Policy Committee on Finance on Wednesday at 2:00 pm, reviewed a service with a budget of about $4.9 million, roughly 20 full-time positions, and 17 street sweepers. Spending in 2025 exceeded budget by about $283,000, or 5.8%, which the audit links in part to the prior winter delivering the most snow in seven years. Of the $985,000 paid to contractors in 2025 for sweeping, trucking, towing, and parking enforcement, the audit found not all work is subject to independent on-site verification, warning this creates a risk of fraud, error, or inappropriate payment. It also found the program's service levels have not been updated since 2017, part of a wider City problem of outdated policy documents going unmonitored. Administration has agreed with all the recommendations and plans to fully implement independent verification of contractor work by the 2028 spring sweep.
  
  
• The City of Saskatoon is defending a $297,490 payment to Calgary-based artist duo Sans façon for three large plastic rock sculptures. The sculptures, titled Modern Erratics, sit at the Forestry Farm, Diefenbaker Park, and the Material Recovery Centre at the landfill, and were made from more than 10,000 pounds of processed plastic, including grain bags, bottle caps, and garbage bins. Community Services General Manager Celene Anger says that the previous Council approved the money in 2021 as part of the $37.5-million Material Recovery Centre capital budget, that the art amounts to 0.79% of that project, and that the spending does not reduce operating budgets for core services. Ward 5 Councillor Randy Donauer says the community's frustration is valid, and plans to bring forward a motion at the August 26th Council meeting to review how much money is allocated to public art.
  
  
• City Council voted unanimously last Wednesday to study the risks and benefits of data centres and to restrict new ones from locating in Saskatoon until that work is done. The motion from Ward 8 Councillor Scott Ford directs Administration to report back on everything from potential economic benefits to demands on water and electricity, and requires an interim bylaw restricting the use of land for data centres in the meantime. Ford said no company has applied to build one in Saskatoon, but argued the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence means someone will eventually come knocking. The study is expected to take about six months, and Council is expected to vote on the interim restrictions at its August meeting. The Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce called the study "forward-thinking and prudent", though its CEO Jason Aebig warned that common sense is giving way to fear campaigns on the issue. 

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