By Thia James

City won’t pursue second-bridge resolution at SUMA

Dec 10, 2013 | 11:12 AM

Prince Albert’s resolution calling for a second bridge will no longer be on the table at the 2014 Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) convention.

On Monday, city council voted to rescind its earlier vote to put forward the resolution at the upcoming SUMA convention.

During Monday’s meeting, Coun. Don Cody expressed his disappointment with SUMA’s “tinkering” with the resolution. He said SUMA indicated there were certain words they wanted to remove from the resolution. “Words like ‘immediacy’ … they don’t want us to say ‘urgency,’ the likes of that. Well, this is an urgent issue. It is a provincial issue. It is a provincial bridge.”

He supported withdrawing the resolution and working on it further, as proposed by Mayor Greg Dionne.

“SUMA wants to wordsmith our resolution,” Dionne said after Monday’s council meeting. 

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“So, instead of doing that, we’ve decided to withdraw it. We’re going to re-submit it in 2015, and what we’re going to do, we’re going to ask our partners, the cities, and everyone in the North, and in the South, because it is a provincial issue, to send us letters of support similar (to what) we did with the second bridge campaign where we got over 1,700 letters in support.”

He said the campaign got signatures from villages, towns and hamlets in northern Saskatchewan.

“We’re going to do the same thing over the next year in 2014, but direct that energy towards SUMA, who we’re a member of to encourage them,” Dionne said.

Council had previously voted in favour of sending the resolution to SUMA for consideration. SUMA is an organization that represents cities, towns and villages in the province.

Had SUMA supported the resolution as proposed by the city, it would have signed on to stand behind “the immediate need to plan and construct a second river crossing at Prince Albert and that the need be prioritized as immediate and forwarded to the provincial minister of highways and infrastructure and the federal minister of trade
and infrastructure. ”

What disappoints Dionne about the issue “stalling” at SUMA is that the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), passed the resolution a year ago, unanimously. Prince Albert is not a member of SARM.

“I don’t know what the hesitation is with SUMA, but we now know what they want, and we’re going to go out and get it. So then, in 2015, it won’t be an issue, and the vote will be on the floor at the SUMA convention in Saskatoon…”

The wording may change, but Dionne said it should be up to Prince Albert, because it is the city’s resolution. “They should take it the way it is or reject it back to us. So once we re-look at it, re-smith it if we decide to do that, then we’ll re-submit it for 2015.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames