2018 will be eventful year, mayor says
StarPhoenix city hall reporter Phil Tank spoke with Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark about his first full year in office.
QWhere do you sense Saskatoon’s economy is right now? Is it recovering, recovered, still struggling ?
AI would say the jury’s still out. There are some signs of recovery for sure that are good and we’re getting some relatively positive forecasts. I think (the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority) is giving the economy a C plus and predicting GDP growth next year. You mentioned earlier the Conference Board (of Canada) is still predicting 3.6 per cent growth, which is even higher than what we’ve heard from others.
But there has been still some stagnation around some of the different resource-based industries.
And I know there’s some businesses struggling. What we need to keep doing is identifying where are those opportunities for further diversification and where is there a chance for us to grow parts of our economy that give us more resilience through the ups and downs of the global resource commodities.
QThe property tax increase in Saskatoon is 4.7 per cent, higher than any approved or proposed increase in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary. How should residents feel about that?
AWell, we wanted to be as transparent as we could in terms of what are the factors that are driving our property tax increase. What did we work on and do to try to bring that down from what was originally identified as potentially up to seven per cent, 6.9 per cent? Without the impact of the changes in provincial revenue, some of it being from the grants-in-lieu and some of it just being in reduction of PST receipts, we know that that increase would have been less than two per cent.
And so we wanted to be as clear as we could, but also I believe strongly that if we want to keep the economy growing we need to keep providing the services we’ve been providing. We are a city where we’re increasingly in competition with cities around North America. And we need to have the amenities and be investing in things like our parks system, a good road network that we have made a lot of investments in to improve and to get back from a very deteriorated and almost a crisis situation just four, five years ago.
QYou’ll be involved in the hiring for two key positions, police chief and city manager. How do you feel about promoting internally versus hiring from outside?
AIt’s always, in cases like these, a good exercise to look at the whole landscape of who the best candidates are to lead an organization. And one of the main reasons is that society is changing fast, cities are changing fast, policing is changing fast. The kinds of things that we’re going to be facing into the future in the city of Saskatoon, when you look at the changes in technology, changes of the economy, the nature of crime, from opioids to crystal meth to some of the drug changes, the way technology is affecting policing, the way the future of transportation is going to affect city building.
I think you need to find the best person for the job and you cannot assume that filling the position with somebody who perhaps knows how the city already works or all of those things is just the only criteria to look for. We do have good candidates internally for both of those two positions.
QYou said during the election you didn’t plan to attend as many events as your predecessor. How do you decide what events to attend?
AI think I’ve said before it’s actually one of the harder parts of the role to go through. We’ve been averaging close to 150 invitations a month in the last little while.
So I think what I’m learning is that some of it is deciding you’re not going to get to every event every year and so you need to divide it up and maybe spread yourself out over a couple of years to make sure you’re still connecting with the different parts of the community. And then it just comes down to what works within the schedule and who can you meet and to try and not put all of your emphasis within one community or another community or another part of the community, but stay connected to the diversity of our community as much as possible.
QThere are some obvious issues coming up in 2018: Bus rapid transit, bike lanes, user fees for trash collection. What is an issue that you think will come up that maybe has not got the attention it deserves?
AI’m just trying to keep my head around the issues that are on the table. The other things are the rail relocation issues and some of those discussions, and the arena is on the horizon. So we have a lot of different big issues that I think we’ll be discussing.
It’s not going to be a boring year, 2018, at all. I think the leadership of the Saskatchewan Party, because that’s deciding the new premier, is going to determine a lot of things for the city as well. And we’re going to need to be ready and engaged with the government as that decision is made, as well as the leadership of the NDP because that will also set a course for the opposition.
QWhat’s your wish list for the next premier of Saskatchewan?
AI think someone who recognizes the roles that cities are playing right now in helping to be an engine of the economy, also the services we provide to the region as a whole or the province as a whole. I worry a little about a growing rural-urban divide and the idea that you have people who are living on acreages in towns and small communities and the farming community on one side and cities on the other.
We’re very interdependent. And people who are living in the smaller communities are sending their kids here for school or they’re coming here to shop or they’re coming here to the hospitals to get medical treatment if they need it.
So I’m looking for a partner who doesn’t also surprise us, but that will let us know as they approach budgets where they think the issues are and where their concerns are and let us problem solve as opposed to surprises. Their commitment to revenue sharing is important and in a lot of ways it’s something that not every province has. And I don’t want to take that for granted, that that commitment has been there. And it’s something that we need to keep strong as we go into the future.
QYou answered a lot of questions about next year’s Remai Modern finances at budget. Where do you think the Remai Modern will be five years from now?
AI think it has all the potential to be a real gathering place for the city as a whole. It’s both an art gallery that is a chance to inspire the community and celebrate and showcase the incredible history of art production that we have in this province and be a place for young artists to come and to be inspired and express themselves to connect Saskatchewan residents with art from all over the world and all of the expressions and forms that takes. For us to be challenged to do that.