YORKTON – The 2024 Municipal Election set for Nov. 13 will see the public cast their votes with two mayoral candidates and 10 councillors to choose from.
SaskToday.ca reached out to each candidate with a set of questions to help inform the public on who they're voting for.
Stephanie Ortynsky, Candidate for City Council
First, a brief history of your time in the city. How long have you been here, work experience, political experience, etc.
Since I was born and raised in Yorkton, the city has always drawn me home. I am a graduate of the Yorkton Regional High School (YRHS). I attended the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) where I achieved a bachelor’s degree in commerce. My first summer job in university was as a Zone 4 Sports camp coordinator right here at the Gloria Hayden Community Centre. After my commerce degree, I worked as a marketing coordinator with my family’s Ford and Honda dealerships. I continue to be involved on the board of my family’s businesses.
While working here in the city in 2010, in 2013 and most recently from 2021 to 2023, I have realized my passion to understand and implement smart government choices that make the biggest difference in people’s lives. I returned to Saskatoon to complete my masters’ and PhD in public policy at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS). My dissertation focused on how taxpayer money can be better spent to achieve outcomes in education and wellbeing.
During my studies at the U of S, I took on several contracts and teaching opportunities (listed on my LinkedIn profile) not only to fund my education but also to gain valuable professional experience along the way. Also during this time, I began teaching yoga in 2014. With the pandemic in 2021, I returned to Yorkton to be closer to my parents, youngest sister and her family. While living in Yorkton and teaching for JSGS remotely in 2021-23, I also taught yoga with two local Yorkton businesses - Inner Cycle and with Unwind with Melissa.
After the completion of my PhD in June 2023, I accepted a year-long postdoctoral research contract at one of the best universities in North America in Toronto; engaging with some of Canada’s top municipal government experts. I am now back in Yorkton as a full-time resident with a hybrid research contract beginning with the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA), the University of Regina, and the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS) on November 1, 2024.
Why do you feel you're qualified to represent the public on the City Council?
In addition to my 15 years of academic and teaching experience, I grew up in Yorkton, but also have lived here as an adult. I have also experienced what life is like in other parts of the province, country and around the world.
There’s a saying that “one cannot always see the forest for the trees.” I have conducted research and evaluation projects in several places — Yorkton, Saskatoon, Toronto, Switzerland, South Africa and Tajikistan. I bring a global perspective that can serve Yorkton to be a provincially, if not nationally, competitive city in which to live and work.
I have been an active volunteer for most of my life, and recently, I served as co-chair and secretary respectively on the national boards of Upstream and the Ukrainian Museum of Canada. Last year, I mentored students at JSGS on their career journeys into provincial government. During the winter session I taught municipal finance for the University of Toronto’s Masters of Urban Innovation program.
In all the work I have done - successfully obtaining funding for research projects, collaborating with local partners, completing evaluations for non-profit organizations, teaching masters’ level public policy, statistics, public sector management, and analysis, I bring professionalism, integrity, community-mindedness, inclusiveness, and warmth to all my interactions.
What issues do you feel are the most pressing for the city?
As a city, we have several challenges and opportunities to address collectively. The most pressing issues for the city right now in 2024 that we can begin to address in the next four years include: housing affordability and variety; homelessness and social issues; aging infrastructure and recreational capacity; economic development and attracting skilled workers; community safety and wellbeing; environmental sustainability and participation in local government.
In our provincial public policy schools (JSGS) we teach students that problem definition is an integral first step in all tiers of government. To fully understand an issue, how big it is, how we as a city have been performing over time, and to select the right fiscally responsible solution, I suggest we look deeper.
In Yorkton, there is a perception of stagnant economic growth. I say perception because this statement can be further investigated. To start, we see vacant buildings, declining city infrastructure, and fewer young people in the city because of: limited diversification of industries, and out-migration of youth, labour force skills gaps, underinvestment in infrastructure, competition from other communities, and larger economic cycles.
Specific issues that I have heard from residents are a lack of ice surfaces, limited activities for children in town during the summer months, booked up accommodations to host hockey, dance, and other sporting events, and even spraying down the North road and back parking lots of the fairgrounds to prevent dust during major events.
Another visible issue with which Yorkton is dealing is homelessness and public safety concerns. I speak more to the reasons for this specific challenge and how to tackle it below in question #5.
How would you plan to address these issues?
All of the issues with which the City of Yorkton is dealing require long-term vision, planning, implementation, and evaluation. The only way to tackle all these challenges we face as a community are with innovative ways of thinking, strategic partnerships, and long-term services and investments.
Together as a city, including elected council, citizens, business owners, and the City of Yorkton staff, it is imperative that we build a city-wide strategic growth plan (our North Star) for a minimum of the next 5-10 years. Collectively, with measurable goals, targets, and budget amounts to achieve economic development, public safety, the City of Yorkton thrives.
Yorkton’s local government is a system that operates within a larger ecosystem. There are the municipal, provincial, and federal responsibilities and respective funding mechanisms to consider. Many of the issues we see as symptoms in Yorkton such as homelessness and limited access to physicians come from a lack of future planning, budgeting, and proper implementation across all tiers of government.
First, we need to define how big these issues are. What does the data tell us on how they have improved or become worse over time; what is in our capacity to impact; and what strategies make economic sense to employ?
As an elected city councilor, I will solicit community engagement to define the direction in which we are headed. Then, making use of the knowledge from the City of Yorkton staff, we can select the most fiscally responsible strategies to arrive at those destinations. We would build an inclusive multi-year strategic growth plan tied to budgetary goals. We can also discuss implementing a multi-year operating budget. Several municipalities across Canada including Saskatoon, Mississauga and Vancouver, to name a few, have adopted this approach to make long-term choices.
My reason for running for council is to hit the ground running and make long-term sustainable change for our collective future. In four years, you can assess whether I did a good job at the ballot box. I will not simply seek short-term wins merely to be re-elected.
In Yorkton we're experiencing concerns with homelessness, drug abuse, mental health, and crime. Though separate issues they're often intertwined and something that falls on the shoulders of the provincial government. What steps would you, as a city councilor, take to ensure a closer working relationship with the provincial government so that a meaningful impact on these issues can be made? What work or education do you have that qualifies your answer?
This is an increasing, complex issue that faces Yorkton, along with many other communities in Canada. There are several reasons for being unhoused, that include, but are not limited to: a lack of affordable housing, increasing costs of living, unemployment, mental health, addictions, living with a disability, domestic violence, trauma and more.
These are all root causes to homelessness that may have touched us or someone we love at some point in life. Any solution to this problem will require acknowledging and addressing all or any one of these root causes, along with what the city can do financially and from a partnership with the provincial government. Currently, the city meets regularly with provincial ministers. This will continue and be strengthened. We as citizens of Yorkton can ask more of our elected Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA).
Two ideas I have to tackle this problem come from my 10 years of training as a social scientist, a statistics instructor, and evaluation consultant on Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) projects are:
- First is to establish better data infrastructure for the City of Yorkton to collect and make decisions based on specific, timely and measurable information;
- Secondly, I would like to build on what is already available in the city for prevention, targeted emergency responses, and long-term plans to support those who are unhoused.
In terms of having the right data for decision-making, we need to know where we are starting. How big of an issue is this? How many people are affected? How are businesses impacted? How are the people of Yorkton affected? And why are people unhoused in the first place? The only sustainable solution after a proper assessment of our current situation is to deal with the root causes of homelessness with our provincial government. Constitutionally the Province of Saskatchewan is responsible for health care, social services, and municipal affairs and is legally required to fund these services equitably across Saskatchewan.
Yorkton requires a much larger supply of housing options for any income level. This can be done, with city support, by incentivizing developers to build more affordable units with new projects. We can explore partnerships with non-profit housing providers and build more city housing that currently pays for itself such as senior housing in our city. We need to lobby the provincial government to pay rent directly to landlords or trustees.
What would you do to improve on transparency to maintain the public's trust in their municipal government?
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), trust in local government is high or moderately high for 54% of Canadians. Reasons for this low number are a declining trust in institutions overall, political polarization and misinformation. Ways to build trust and transparency in local government include fostering stronger relationships with community stakeholders, ongoing communication and engagement, being open in decision-making, providing opportunities for public input, and delivering quality services that match the needs of residents.
I have taught and published my research in academic journals on different government budgeting approaches so I see this as a key vehicle to be more transparent with the people of Yorkton. And as I dare say, a fun way for residents to be engaged and learn more about how the city council is working for them and best spending their tax dollars.
One option is to include the people of Yorkton in a participatory budgeting approach. This would mean that a portion of the city’s $40 million plus operating budget (3.93% increase from 2022) and $4.7 million capital budget in 2023 would be decided by YOU, the people of Yorkton.
Although still beginning to gain traction in Canada, some municipalities in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and British Columbia have begun to include residents in budget decision-making with a participatory budgeting approach. This approach can increase civic engagement and improve how resources are spent.
It is necessary that we, as a city council, be responsive to local community needs in real-time; know what city services need to be improved or possibly discontinued; build greater trust in our local government and strengthen our community.
I would go a few steps further to say that we not only require open, public budget deliberations but also set a standard that 80% of council discussions be open to the people of Yorkton and the media.
Ways that we can measure whether we as a City of Yorkton council are being transparent include timely access to information, open data, public consultations, responsiveness to public inquiries and concerns, clear conflict of interests rules, live-streaming public meetings, and using social media to communicate with residents in real time. Another downstream indicator of transparency, and engagement with city government is measurable increases in voter turnout.
Based on the development and release of a much needed city-wide strategic growth plan, I would organize a City Manager’s Address and City of Yorkton Town Hall for taxpayers to ask questions and align us all towards our city’s future.
