Greg Lightfoot News Today

City council in North Battleford made a decision at Tuesday’s council meeting to uphold the demolition order on a dilapidated property at 1102 - 106th St. The decision came after council had . . .

Con-Tech were the lowest of five bidders for that portion of the contract. Their original bid was higher, at $6,495,362. Sean Bayer of KGS Group noted to council that costs savings of $85,000 were found, which included the removal of items such as a ventilation system in the wet well, alternative concrete sealant, changes to the metal snow fence and modification of the snow fence. Bayer acknowledged in his presentation they had been targeting a higher cost savings of $100,000, but “those a...

Following the presentation, council then met in a half-hour in-camera session behind closed doors to discuss the issue further. In the end, there was no public decision announced and it is not immediately clear in the aftermath of the meeting what the next steps are for the city in addressing the dilapidated property. The city has been attempting for months to take action against the property, starting with the issuing of a demolition order on Aug. 27, 2020. The order came in the wake of a ...

He raised those concerns again at Planning Committee, saying he had received an email from Derek Mahon, former Battleford mayor, whose local group had put in a bid to be the project management team for the trunk main project work. They had submitted their written application and were the low bid, said Ironstand, but ended up ranked fifth out of six bidders in the evaluation by AECOM and were eliminated from consideration. Ironstand made the case that Mahon’s company was “quite capable of...

In her presentation to council, the executive director of CMHA Battlefords Branch, Jane Zielke de Montbrun, explained the interpretation of the Cities Act regarding their tax exemption is in dispute. Section 262 (1) (p) states that the following is exempt from taxation “so long as the buildings and lands are actually used and occupied by one of the following institutions, the buildings and land attached owned by a division, branch or local unit of: (i)The Royal Canadian Legion Saskatchewan...

That is $1.5 million over the original submitted cost of the project of $13.6 million. Of that overage, Bayer said half of it is made up of construction PST, which was a provincial government dictate that came in after the city applied for the project in 2017. Checking with the feds, Bayer said there was nothing that could have been done by city staff about it. Essentially, he said, the timing of the submission is the driver of that cost. Bayer said it was a cost the city would not get back...

But while COVID-19 was something that caught a lot of people by surprise, the pandemic was something the city saw coming. As early as January, the events in China and elsewhere around the world where the still-unnamed novel coronavirus was wreaking havoc were noticed by city officials. Before the pandemic was even declared in March, the city was working on a pandemic plan and they had also struck a deal with Battleford for a joint administrative committee to deal with the pandemic response. ...

That means the budget, with its proposed one percent property tax increase, now heads to council for discussion and potential adoption on Monday, Dec. 14. In the end, there were no changes to the proposals administration had put forward on taxes. The consensus at the end of the night was to stick with the one percent increase in the general fund, which will flow to capital reserves. For utilities, the consensus was also to stick with the proposed zero percent increase in the utilities fund. ...

The presentations from all the city departments have now wrapped up. The feeling from council is they should meet again Thursday night for some final discussions, as they consider whether to go ahead with the administration proposal of a one percent property tax increase for 2021, or adjust it up or down. That deliberation session is scheduled to begin at 6:20 p.m. Thursday evening, and is again open to the public on ZOOM. It will be held right after council meets for an in-camera matter. Th...