COVID has changed St. Catharines
‘From bike lanes to parks to beach amenities, we’ve learned a lot,’ mayor says of shifting priorities
City staff have been told to rethink the proposed St. Catharines capital budget presented Wednesday night and incorporate lessons learned from COVID-19.
Mayor Walter Sendzik said the city has changed since the start of the pandemic — more people are riding bikes requiring bike lanes, for instance — and that needs to be reflected in the 2021 budget.
“I do think there’s a lot we have learned in the last seven months that’s going to teach us more about how residents view their city amenities, how residents view their neighbourhoods,” Sendzik said.
“We actually have to start investing today and show them with this budget that we see the changes being made.”
Sendzik said he got the sense from the proposed budget that COVID-19 didn’t really happen and the city was just doing what it was planning on doing last year.
The $48.4-million draft budget was referred back to staff to comment on the concerns.
All of city council met for the first time Wednesday to tackle the 2021 capital and operating budgets. Councillors agreed earlier this year to meet as a supersized budget team for deliberations, rather than as a sixmember committee, because of the financial pressures of COVID-19.
With 13 councillors now asking questions about projects and priorities, the three-hour meeting didn’t get through the whole agenda and the discussion about the operating budget was pushed to Monday.
“Perhaps, we may have overreached on trying to deal with both the capital and operating on the same night, but I applaud everybody’s efforts,” said budget chair St. Patrick’s Coun. Mat Siscoe, adding councillors had a good discussion.
Councillors asked staff about the status of a multitude of projects involving trees, benches, HVAC systems, bike lanes and protected bike lanes, washrooms, splash pads, water mains, shoreline protection, road works and more.
Following on what councillors raised, Sendzik told staff if the city has learned nothing from COVID-19, it’s that people are using bikes in a more active way than ever before. He took issue with the proposed budget only investing in 60 metres of bike lanes.
Another issue raised was the public washrooms at city hall, which have been closed since March because of the pandemic. Sendzik said the city should be providing that necessity and looking at self-cleaning systems that don’t require staff, like units councillors have seen at conferences in other municipalities.
He also said after the hottest summer on record, the city should be putting in a splash pad in Merritton ward.
Anthony Martuccio, director of engineering, facilities and environmental services, said there were struggles in coming up with the capital budget due to funding restrictions.
Martuccio said staff prepared an application for infrastructure funding from other levels of government with a strong focus on what was learned from COVID-19. He said they are trying to improve and fill gaps within the trail system and improve active transportation, as well as going forward with the major upgrades to Sunset Beach with its new parking lot and walkways within the park.
Martuccio agreed the city hasn’t been able to expand the bike lane network as it would like.
“We’ve indicated that major road infrastructure upgrades are required to add to some of the extensions and our budget does not accommodate that,” he said.
But Sendzik told staff council needs to see how the city is changing the design of St. Catharines due to the pandemic.
“I think council needs to really look at this budget as a capital budget and ask yourselves as councillors, does this reflect what your community has experienced in 2020 and are there ways and means that we can address this budget to start to change how we see our city?
“From bike lanes, to parks to beach amenities, we’ve learned a lot in seven months and it needs to be reflected in this capital budget.”