By paNOW Staff

Q & A with Mayor Jim Scarrow

Jan 20, 2011 | 3:48 PM

After the Mayor’s state of the city address, paNOW had another chance to ask the Jim Scarrow a few questions. Below is a transcript of that conversation.

Andrew de Souza, paNOW: How does it feel now that you’ve given that speech?

Mayor Jim Scarrow: Well it’s a good feeling to have it presented and I think it was a real confidence building day for everyone here. I’ve been excited to put this speech together and when you do that you kind of take stock of the things that lead you to the completion of which has been a very big year for the city and takes you into 2011.

Andrew de Souza, paNOW: Just on to one of the questions from one of our users. They were talking about the budget and transparency in terms of, I know you stress transparency a lot for your mayorship, but they were talking about transparency for city-run facilities and city-funded facilities, what do you think that’ll look like in the budget coming up now?

Mayor Jim Scarrow:  Well I don’t think it’ll be any different financial statements are always available and there’s no hidden financial statements, they’re there, they’re large documents and they take some reading to follow but there’s no reason to use the word transparency. They are always available — there are some of them that take longer to come in. The city’s a good example of that, our financial statements don’t come in until as late as eight months the following year and so whatever it is… eventually come into the public view.

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Andrew de Souza, paNOW:: and lastly just your overall confidence going into the budget now that it’s been a little bit delayed and you have a little bit more time to look at it?

Mayor Jim Scarrow:  Well, you know it’s all about money and there’s never enough and that’s always been the case in my five years as mayor that it’s about tough choices, intelligent choices. Choices that you need to make, decisions that you need to make to get you where you need to be. Maintaining services, you know we’ve had growth so there’s more money coming in. Excellent cooperation from the government of Saskatchewan, a municipal operation grant nearly one point five, but you know, there’s never enough money.

It’s about good choices, we’ve got a good council, good administration, we’ll go through that process and we will have a tax increase. How large it will be, will be comparable to other cities that are challenged the same way we are. You know infrastructures are a big piece of what we have to address. And so it’s never easy but we’re going to do the best we can.

Andrew de Souza, paNOW:: You talked about mining and forestry coming in, how will you as the mayor, facilitate those things coming in?

Mayor Jim Scarrow: Certainty the green industrial park is a big part of the that. The big thing with the forestry is that it’s there. The trees are there the roads the infrastructure the plant. Those are all there. I’ve mentioned Domtar. I’m hopeful that they will be willing sellers. They appear to be. We know there’s more than one company interested in the facility and hopefully we can encourage all levels, including the City of Prince Albert, the Federal Government and the Province… it’s a whole industry. It’s not about the pulp mill it’s the whole industry. We must never forget that that we need to address it as a provincial issue as Minister Boyd has been doing but just sell it, we can do the rest.

Andrew de Souza, paNOW:: Is that something you’re going to be actively pursuing. We’re talking meetings, getting into the really nitty-gritty as the mayor in the coming years?

Mayor Jim Scarrow:  Well certainly being aware that there is more than one buyer it certainly is time for an active engagement of all parties in doing the right thing.

See related:

– Mayor calls for ‘Positive Attitude’ for 2011