YORKTON - The list of wants is long but the funds to build are short.
That in a nutshell is the conundrum facing Yorkton Council these days, and frankly finding a solution to the growing problem while critical appears almost impossible.
Let’s take for a moment one specific area of the city’s budget, that of recreation.
The desire for more is most certainly there from the public. There might not be one thing that even a significant portion of the population in the city wants, but there are most certainly pockets of demand.
Take for example the visit to the most recent regular meeting of Yorkton Council by Yorkton Minor Football who are looking to the city to provide another field on which their young players can practice. The request is not a new one, with the organization actually having been asking for the fields for several years, and it’s not a mega-dollar project if it were given a green light but it is just one of the items on the list.
A representative of basketball has been before Council wanting a facility dedicated to that sport citing problems accessing needed court time from facilities which are largely school-division controlled gymnasiums.
There is also interest in additional outdoor basketball courts too.
At least in this case they have actually advanced to the point of being included in a planned development with a ‘pump bike track’, (another public request coming from the public), behind Columbia School that was actually budgeted for – near $1 million -- and then shelved although it is likely to reappear for Council discussion at some point this year.
Pickleball numbers have grown and promoters of that sport would like more courts both inside and out.
There is interest in new flooring for the Agripavilion at the Gallagher Centre to allow for training opportunities across several sports.
And, Councillor Darcy Zaharia has long had a vision that would be a multi-sport field house in the community which might solve at least a few other requests but would be a big dollar investment.
Then there are needs at the Yorkton library to consider, and Yorkton Mayor Aaron Kienle mentioned a look at JayCee Beach during budget deliberations, and the list goes on.
In isolation each ‘want’ has merit for at least a small segment of the community, but collectively the price tag would be startlingly high.
It is the investment – whether in one, or all – that becomes a difficult decision as the municipality sits in a roughly century-long deficit in terms of street, sidewalk and underground pipe renewal. Where is a dollar best spent?
And of course where do the dollars come from. The city is almost into a perpetual cycle of 3-4 per cent tax hikes coupled with increasing water costs and new hospital levies which has to have at least a segment of the community wondering where they continue to find the dollars to pay – it is not like the minimum wage in Saskatchewan is keeping pace?
So just what recreation wants are worthy of taxpayer dollars – especially when one factors in that such facilities rarely make money.
It is a conundrum indeed for Council to wrestle.
