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POLL: SUMA board disputes ‘immediate’ need for second bridge

Dec 13, 2013 | 5:52 AM

The organization representing the province’s major municipalities is defending its objection to the wording of Prince Albert’s proposed second bridge resolution.

On Monday, city council voted to rescind the resolution it had earlier put forward for approval at the 2014 Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) convention. Members of council, and the city’s mayor, Greg Dionne, decided to withdraw the second-bridge resolution, citing attempts by SUMA to “wordsmith” it.

The resolution called on SUMA to support Prince Albert’s call for a second bridge. Had SUMA supported the resolution, it would have stood 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. ”

But SUMA’s board did not stand behind the “immediate need” for the bridge.

Its president, Debra Button said on Thursday that the resolution probably would have passed through SUMA’s board had it not had mentioned an “immediate priority.”

“Because truly, what does immediate priority [mean] compared to what? And that was what personally what I was struggling with, ‘compared to what?’ And I think that really challenged our board, the immediate priority.”

She said SUMA represents 82 per cent of the province’s population, with 450 member municipalities. Button, who is also the mayor of the City of Weyburn, said the member municipalities all have infrastructure challenges and the resolutions are intended to shape SUMA’s public policy agenda for the coming year.

“The resolutions are not to set a priority for local community projects, because we are so diverse and we are such a big organization,” Button said. “We clearly don’t want to take resolutions from 450 municipalities on each one of their unique infrastructure needs.”

The board was also concerned about the message sent to other levels of government if the resolution were to fail on the floor at the SUMA convention. SUMA’s board also didn’t change the wording of the resolution, but did make recommendations, according to Button.

“We are trying to work with PA to say ‘let’s just re-jig this resolution, let’s just get some wordsmithing done and let’s look at it again, but they have pulled it. Truly what SUMA’s role is to support good public policy and protect all of the interests of our cities, towns and villages across the Province of Saskatchewan.”

And where the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities’ support of Prince Albert’s second-bridge resolution is concerned, Button said that organization does not have any guidelines or policies around resolutions.

“We’re unique from them in that way.”

After council opted to withdraw the resolution from consideration at this year’s convention, Dionne said the city would do its own “wordsmithing,” and planned to put forward a revised resolution in 2015.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames