Exits from planning panel worry mayor of White City
A wave of departures from a seven-municipality committee could create “uncertainty ” around regional projects, says a nearby mayor, who fears for a proposed hiking trail loop east of Regina.
In late January, the councils of Balgonie, Pilot Butte and the Rural Municipality of Edenwold voted to leave the White Butte Regional Planning Committee.
Bruce Evans, the mayor of White City, said he got emails from all three municipalities within a span of about five minutes on Jan. 24. The City of Regina, the RM of Sherwood and the Village of Edenwold are still on board, but Evans said the loss of three regional players is “detrimental” to planning work in a fast-growing region.
“There are a number of things that we have been working on recently and they’re kind of being left in limbo,” he said. “Clearly it reduces the amount of inter-municipal communication. That’s a problem, I believe.”
He’s particularly concerned about the future of plans for a regional trail system that would pass through the territory of all the former committee members.
“It could be a cross-country ski trail, hiking trails, basically a pedestrian-friendly way of interconnecting the communities,” he said. “That is frankly in limbo right now. I don’t know where it sits.”
Evans says he has no idea what prompted the three municipalities to leave the planning body, which he said played a major role in securing an RCMP detachment and improving safety around the Regina bypass. It also scored victories on a number of water and sewage infrastructure projects, he said.
He doubts that the cost of membership had much to do with it, since the municipalities only pay $5,000 per year to sit on the planning committee.
No representatives from Balgonie, Pilot Butte or the RM of Edenwold returned repeated requests for comment from the LeaderPost. The only explanation came in an announcement on the RM of Edenwold website, where town administrator Kim McIvor cited the amount of time his staff were devoting to committee meetings.
“We completed an analysis of staff and council time spent working on committee-related meetings and tasks and considered the results of these efforts,” he explained.
“Some work has been done through the committee and we will now continue to move forward with regional planning efforts without the formality of the committee.”
But Evans doesn’t buy that argument. The committee once met monthly, but then switched to quarterly meetings. He thinks something else must be afoot.
“Something’s going on, I just don’t know what it is, and it’s really unfortunate,” he said. “I think we’ll just have to wait for the other shoe to drop.”
Regina’s planning director, Shauna Bzdel, also views the news as something of a mystery.
“We received the same notice of withdrawal as all the member municipalities,” she said. “There was no indication previously as to any concerns or issues with the committee.”
Nonetheless, Bzdel is confident that Regina will be able to continue working closely with the departing municipalities.
“This is one forum for regional planning, it’s not the only one,” she said. “It’s not all lost — we built some great relationships.”
The White Butte area is one of the province’s fastest growing regions, with the population of some communities expanding by 15 or even 20 per cent over five years. Evans said they need to plan in tandem to make sure they have “room to grow.”