Gravelbourg & District Tribune

Now is the time for reckoning.

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We have a new Gravelbourg Town Council and there will be some steep learning curves for most of them. Congratulations to the new mayor Mathieu Forest and new councillors Zack Ogilvie and Donovan Fehr.

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If I had to sum up the results I would put it this way.

Palestre 1 – St Joseph’s Hospital 0

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The biggest success stories for the outgoing council was cleaning up the water rates and securing major grants for infrastructure improvements. (There were two failed attempts by previous councils). Other successes were finally finishing the east drainage ditch (50 plus years after it was started) and decommissioning the landfill and water tower. Big projects. Big expenses. That will free up some funds.

 

The one decision that hurt the most was shutting down all services at the convent. But there is only so much money to go around. Another failure is recognizing the value of the hospital and not create a fund for future projects to save the facility.

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Having said that I voted AGAINST the last two budgets. I could not accept the tax increases. There was no attempt by the past council to find efficiencies and make cuts. For starters Gravelbourg has one of the highest recreation budgets per capita in the province. Rosetown was the closest (lower) and it’s three times bigger in population.

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We can no longer afford ½ million in a recreation budget when you have over $1.5 million of borrowed money to pay off. How do communities like Lafleche, Mossbank etc. deal with their rinks? Recreation board run the facilities at no cost to their respective communities.

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I brought many ideas on how to reorganize the rink. All other towns and villages have found the answers. All were rejected. Fair enough.

 

Just remember this. You can’t tax your way out of a problem. Keep that in mind when working on the next budget.