YORKTON - The latest edition of Yorkton Council got down to business Monday with its first regular meeting – albeit one which didn’t show what direction this new edition will take – nor given the short time since the election should we have expected such.
That said, it would appear likely this group will look to update the city’s strategic plan. Such an effort was certainly mentioned during the campaign by newcomer Stephanie Ortynsky, and pausing to do some planning is never a bad idea if done with some caution.
Planning on a city level is never easy as there are just so many variables at play.
Go back a decade or so and recall Yorkton was rolling along as cities do, and then one day two huge agricultural companies announce canola crush facilities here and the economy locally altered, the needs for water changed, the impact on roads changed – and no plan made even a few months earlier would have even considered the possibility.
Two major flood events changed things dramatically too, and planning would never have thought about what a worldwide pandemic might mean to the city.
Those are all big picture changes but smaller things make planning a somewhat nebulous thing too.
Changes to provincial regulations have meant increased costs at the landfill over the years, and is pushing the city toward a new sewage treatment facility at present. The province changing how hospital construction is paid for is impacting city planning too.
And if you look at micro-occurrances consider that not so many years ago the Yorkton Yorkers existed and wanted a cricket pitch. The city never took on the project, but then the team faded away. Would it have been good money spent that might have saved the sport locally, or money lost?
You might wonder the same thing at the ball diamonds where lights were installed largely to serve the Western Major Baseball League franchise which has since gone defunct.
Detailed planning ultimately is difficult.
But, if you end up with a plan that is broad in its strokes ‘we want a safe community open to all’ as an example, it can quickly read like little more than a greeting card platitude.
Finding a way to build a plan which can reasonably be followed will be the first challenge of the new council if it chooses to go that direction. Knowing where we as a city is going is certainly a good idea, it’s just whether a reliable map can ever be drawn up, given the high number of variables which can impact the road ahead.
