The Battlefords Chamber of Commerce are standing behind truckers seeking changes to the City of North Battlefords new traffic bylaw.
Tuesday the Chamber board decided to take a lead role in setting up a transportation committee to deal with traffic issues, and they plan to keep up efforts to lobby for changes to the traffic bylaw that was enacted this summer.
Chamber president Pat Smith indicated hat there would be further work on the Chamber's behalf to get the City "going in the right direction" on the traffic bylaw, which has met fierce blowback from the trucking industry over its trucking permit fee provisions.
"It was a shock to us," admitted Smith. He noted many Chamber clients were alarmed at the costs associated with the new permit system.
The traffic bylaw requires trucks of 16,400 kg and up, driving off the main trucking routes, to get a permit. There are daily, seasonal and annual fees.
The annual fee is $6,000 per truck, said Smith - a number that prompted gasps from other Chamber board members.
One company, Edge Transport, has 50 trucks go through the Battlefords every day. Their owner faced a big financial hit from the bylaw as a result.
"It was basically going to cost him $300,000 annually," Smith said.
The fees were brought in to help address road repairs, in part due to the deterioration of the roads from truck traffic. However, the impact of the bylaw on trucks was widespread.
Even smaller delivery trucks would be affected. One director commented the bylaw impacted "every truck on the road."
The impact also went far beyond the trucking industry and hit numerous businesses relying on suppliers to deliver items in the city. Smith acknowledged even Battlefords Co-op was impacted.
It was noted local businesses off the main trucking route - Home Hardware for example - would be adversely impacted. Executive Director Linda Machniak raised the spectre of an uneven playing field for businesses, as one located on the main trucking route would not be as severely impacted by the fees as the ones that were off it.
Already the bylaw was having an impact on business. Battleford mayor Chris Odishaw recounted his business had trouble with one transporter who refused to even drive into the community to deliver items before Odishaw was finally able to convince them he was in Battleford, where the bylaw is not in effect.
Odishaw noted North Battleford "would have been the first community of its kind in Saskatchewan and Western Canada to put on these kinds of fees." He also noted the negative feedback he got from business.
"My conversation with people like Doug Siemens from Siemens Group, which is Kindersley Transport and Edge Transport, was 'we're pulling out.'"
Odishaw did say, however, that the Traffic Bylaw was a massive 66-page document and the trucking provisions in it would have been easy to slip past councillors.
"They passed it as a big document, and there's only three-quarters of a page in there that has the big influence, the big effect," said Odishaw, who suggested city council should rescind the provisions impacting trucking.
The Chamber met with a couple of councillors and administration about some of the concerns expressed Sept. 7. The Saskatchewan Trucking Association went to council Sept. 10 to call for a moratorium on the bylaw's trucking provisions.
Councillors and city administration officials indicated at that meeting they would take another look at the bylaw and would holding off on enforcing its trucking provisions.
Smith indicated at the directors meeting that the city officials who met with the Chamber recognized the provisions had some unintended consequences.
"The good thing about it was they were very open-minded," said Smith. "I think they recognized it was a little far reaching, more so than they anticipated."
Smith was optimistic that changes would take place to the bylaw to resolve the issues. He told directors there was a little legwork yet, but "it's going in the right direction."
