By Shane O'Neill

2016 a year of ups and downs for P.A. mayor

Dec 30, 2016 | 11:03 AM

For Mayor Greg Dionne, 2016 was a year of ups-and-downs which saw the city persevere through some unexpectedly difficult times, as well as find successes to help grow Prince Albert and improve service for residents and tax payers.

While the Prince Albert’s response to this summer’s water crisis grabbed plenty of headlines for city administration, Dionne said he is most proud of city hall’s commitment to improving infrastructure.

“Our biggest accomplishment, I think, is all the infrastructure work we’ve been doing,” he said. “That’s been noticeable, because now after four years of the paving program, and now we’ve done 40 km of streets it’s really starting to be noticeable.”

The next year will have challenges of its own, though, as an economic slowdown is expected to be on the way. A billion dollar deficit in provincial coffers means less funding could be on the way for 2018 and beyond. Dionne is optimistic though as he believes the city is well positioned, financially, for any slowdown in the economy.

“Well I think we’ve positioned ourselves very well. We were realistic, we didn’t have our heads in the sand,” he said. “One thing that we can’t do as a city, we can’t slow down. But we can’t escalate our costs.”

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At November’s budget committee deliberations, the mayor and council fought hard to ensure there would be no service cuts as part of a tax increase of less than three per cent. There are no guarantees 2018 will be as successful.

“So for 2018 we’re going to have a hard, hard, hard look,” Dionne said of maintaining service levels between 2017 and 2018. “I do believe in 2018, we’re going to have to keep the taxes low again, and water, as we continue to assist our residents in getting through the slowdown.”

Public safety will continue to be a topic of concern in 2017, with the city’s needle program at the front and centre of the debate. The program, run by the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region, is intended to reduce the rate of HIV transmission in the city. But for Mayor Dionne, the program needs to be re-evaluated in order to get needles off city streets.

“The biggest threat to the harm reduction program is the needle program, because that’s what people see. People are now arguing ‘is the harm reduction program even working?’ with the report out that, again, we have the largest increase in HIV in the province and in some cases Western Canada,” Dionne said. “I’m more interested in curing people than giving them a safe place to do their drugs.”

In light of the fentanyl overdose crisis in British Columbia, the national debate around harm reduction has renewed calls for safe injection sites. The mayor said he doesn’t believe a safe injection site would address the issues specific to Prince Albert.

“I don’t want to open a safe injection site, I want to open a huge clinic so we can house 20 [or] 30 addicted people and work with them to try and cure them. The key to success and to controlling our costs in these addiction programs is cure,” he said.

Nationally, the federal government has committed to helping build infrastructure in small and rural communities. Roughly $100 million in federal funding will be available to small communities in Saskatchewan to help build infrastructure, purchase equipment such as buses and public transit and protect communities against natural events like flooding and wildfires.

Mayor Dionne said he’s pleased with city staff members’ commitment to getting all the grant money available. He believes their work in making a case to other levels of government is already paying off.

“We have been making that case, $600,000 for new buses, $2 million over two years for two new water reservoirs,” he explained. “I’ll tell you this, every time they announce a new grant of a new program, we’re there finding out how it can help us. I have to give kudos to Minister Goodale, I’ve met with him numerous times, he’s always been available and I’m looking forward to working with the federal government moving forward.”

In 2017, the mayor hopes to tie up loose ends on the city’s to-do list, including completing the final 1500 meters of the rotary trail, and continuing the revitalization of the downtown core.

shane.oneill@paNOW.com

On Twitter: @stroneill