Our supposedly transparent city council has discussed and likely decided on another important issue in one of those secret, behind closed door meetings.
The executive committee, which is the entire body, met June 27 to talk behind closed doors about a pending Rural Municipality of Moose Jaw approval of a development.
The developer wants to subdivide a parcel of land into lots for commercial operations.
When council and city management discussed the matter in a closed meeting, did they take a straw vote on what became the city manager’s recommendations?
We don’t know. We should know.
What are the reasons council wants the RM to go slow? We were given some after the public meeting but have no clue if any other reasons for opposition exist and what they are about.
The city manager did tell the Moose Jaw Express that council is concerned the development will compete with Grayson Industrial Park.
True. Reality is Grayson Park no longer has that many vacancies for development.
No mention was made of the competition posed by this development to the city’s new Agro-Food Industrial Park stuck between the sewage lagoons and asphalt refinery.
The proposed development could also compete with Agro-Food Park where SaskPower is building the co-generation plant.
Council has approved some recommendations to the RM. Most make sense, some don’t.
Suggestions for talks to create a planning district, to make a buffer zone between the development and city residential make sense.
Suggestions to make smaller lots is likely a way to make the development less competitive with Grayson Park.
The real reason for city opposition to the development in the RM is greed.
Every one of those 40-acre lots planned in the RM could attract three to five million dollars assessment and hundreds of thousands in property tax revenues.
Opposition that arose at the closed door meeting is likely about shafting the RM out of tax dollars.
The city does not have a good neighbour policy with the RM, recently jacking up water rates on a flimsy reason as a tax grab. This is another such attempt.
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The critics of provincial Finance Minister Donna Harpauer’s $8,000 airplane flight to North Battleford are unreasonable.
Harpauer made the trip by plane to discuss the budget. She was too exhausted to drive and correctly chose not to drive. Good for her.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and other critics are bellowing up the wrong tree.
This government eliminated millions of dollars in flight costs every year by selling off the provincial air plane fleet that was on standby.
Now Harpauer has cost $9,000 in two flights this year and critics are calling for her head.
Do they want cabinet ministers to go on foot and then complain their shoes cost too much?
This wrongheaded criticism shows how the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has slipped into a knee jerk trap of criticism without knowing the facts.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
