YORKTON - One of the main responsibilities for a city municipality is funding sport and recreation facilities for residents.
Have a curling rink, hockey arena or baseball diamonds might not be as important as ensuring drinkable water comes out of the faucet and waste finds its way to a treatment facility with every flush but there are always demands for more in terms of recreation.
Certainly Yorkton Council has seen that in recent years with requests ranging from interest in a third ice surface, to requests for a basketball-focused facility to a bicycle pump track to an additional football field – all part of what has been a far longer list.
Of course not every request can be fulfilled.
Certainly there are finite dollars to spend and while property taxes are one a regular year-over-year increase which seems unlikely to stop anytime soon, there are many places to spend not just on recreation as numerous pothole spotted streets and a pending new wastewater treatment plan show.
What is interesting in regards to recreation spending is just how projects end up being funded.
For example, when a local soccer organization wanted some new ‘mini-pitches’ installed they appeared before Council with a plan to build the pitches seeking only that the city ‘front’ the money the group would pay back although sans interest. It was the sort of offer Council truthfully could not refuse. When local groups are willing to invest – in this case covering the entire cost – the municipality can’t really say no.
That’s why a project such as the grandstand was easy to approve with the Yorkton Exhibition Association involved as a funding partner on a facility very much part of the recreation mosaic in Yorkton.
Ditto the men’s golf group at Deer Park Golf Course putting dollars into hole reconstruction at the course.
And most recently Yorkton Pickleball will pay $50,000 over a number of years to facilitate court work focused on their sport.
You might assume from the varied examples groups need to be involved in covering recreation projects undertaken by the city, but of course that is not the case.
More than $7 million was invested in a new clubhouse at Deer Park Golf Course all from the tax pie.
And more than $1 million has recently been approved for a UV & Filtration Replacement Project at the Access Communications Water Park again from the tax pie.
Now one might accept a blended approach to financing which allows municipal versatility, and that in isolation makes sense.
But it also raises the question why some user groups – pickleball players coming to mind – are contributing and other users are not?
It seems a question where Council might at least hold a discussion around whether a policy is needed to make the situation clearer to all rec users.
