Saskatoon Minute: Issue 132

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 its agenda is a proposal to post paid attendants at up to four more riverbank public washrooms. The City began staffing the washroom at North Kiwanis Memorial Park with two commissionaires as a pilot in 2024, and Council has since funded it permanently. Administration says that site was available 99.8% of its scheduled hours in the first half of 2026, while washrooms across the City's year-round network were closed for 9,372 hours, nearly 40% of scheduled operating time. Most of those closures were at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan and Mendel Park, the Permanent Outdoor Festival Site, River Landing Pavilion, and the Victoria Park Boathouse, the four locations now proposed for monitoring. Each site would need about $75,000 in capital work and about $300,000 a year to operate, costs that are not in the current budget and would have to be funded through the mill rate. Administration is recommending that it develop business plan options for the 2028/2029 budget deliberations. The Committee's recommendation will go to a future City Council meeting.
  
  
• The Standing Policy Committee on Transportation will meet tomorrow at 2:00 pm, and one of the items on its agenda is a summary of last winter's road maintenance. About 147 centimeters of snow fell between November 2025 and the end of April 2026, the most in 9 years, with 9 snow events and 20 weather events over the season. The City's snow and ice management budget for 2026 is funded for only 5 to 6 snow events, even though the city has averaged 6 to 7 per winter over the last 5 years. Snow and ice management cost $20.49 million in 2025, $3.03 million over budget, which Administration attributes to 2 heavy winters, 8 snow events against 5 budgeted, and 16 weather events against an average of about 10. Administration notes that city-wide grading of local streets, which was done once last winter in February, is mostly unfunded in the budget. About $8.56 million sits in the snow and ice contingency reserve for 2026. Administration is also looking at a user-pay model for access to the City's snow management facilities, which would require public engagement and further reporting before it could be introduced.
  
  
• The Standing Policy Committee on Planning, Development and Community Services will meet on Wednesday at 9:30 am. On the agenda is a preliminary financial analysis of relocating Wildwood Golf Course so its current site can be redeveloped. Council asked for the analysis in December 2025, directing Administration to study building a replacement course elsewhere while keeping about 55 acres of the existing site as public park space. Administration estimates that selling the rest of the land for development would bring in $61 million, but that servicing the site, buying about 160 acres for a new course, building it, and upgrading the retained park would cost $81,866,000. That leaves an estimated shortfall of $20,866,000, and the figure excludes borrowing costs on the roughly $31 million needed to build the new course before any development could happen, as well as the cost of maintaining the new park. Wildwood, an 18-hole course on about 110 acres at 4050 8th Street East, opened in 1931 and was the busiest 18-hole facility in the province in 2025. No formal public engagement has taken place, but residents who attended the Briarwood Community Association's Annual General Meeting in late April expressed opposition to the idea. Council would need to give further direction before any more work is done.
  
  
• Also on the Committee's agenda is a report on adding ice sheets at ACT and Archibald arenas. Council asked for the report in March, including costs, parking, and nearby sidewalk and lighting improvements. Administration estimates that a basic to mid-range single ice sheet arena would cost between $15 million and $30 million at either location, and no funding source has been identified. A second sheet of ice and parking could fit at Archibald Arena, which is already undergoing an $11.85-million renovation, though Administration warns that designing an expansion now would delay that project and the arena's reopening. At ACT Arena, a third sheet is not feasible within the property without eliminating the parking on the north side, and building in neighbouring Hilliard Gardner Park would mean demolishing the former fire hall there and removing an expanded parking lot, costs not included in the estimate. The Archibald renovation will not address sidewalks or street lighting in the North Park neighbourhood, and no streetlight projects are planned there. Council would need to give further direction before any more work is done.
  
  
• The City of Saskatoon has cancelled the in-person portion of this year’s Point-in-Time count of people experiencing homelessness, citing safety concerns related to potential protest activity. About 250 trained volunteers were scheduled to participate in the count, which would have gathered information directly from people living without shelter. The decision comes as tensions have risen around a large west-side encampment, where efforts by the fire department to clear the site have been met with protests and an unsuccessful court injunction application. The City will instead work with the fire department to estimate the number of people living in encampments and count those staying in shelters, transitional housing and other systems. The change means the 2026 count will not include information gathered directly from unsheltered residents, while a full count and survey is planned for 2027. Saskatoon’s 2025 count identified 1,931 people experiencing homelessness.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

Do you think the City should continue exploring the relocation of Wildwood Golf Course if doing so would require an estimated $20.9 million in additional funding, or should the existing course remain where it is?

Reply to this email and let us know!

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