A lot has happened on Prairie Dog’s watch, most of it depressing

30 years by Paul Dechene

I’ve only been covering Regina city council for 15 of Prairie Dog’s 30 years but feel like I’ve aged at twice the normal human rate in that time which, my editor says, qualifies me to write this anniversary look-back at Queen City municipal politics.

1. SECRET ORIGINS Prairie Dog ran a call for writers in 2008 to which I replied saying I’m only interested in writing about municipal politics. That was the foot in the door that kicked off 15 years of city hall fun times!

2. FIRST IMPRESSIONS First time I met Prairie Dog editor Stephen Whitworth was at an early public consultation in Knox Metropolitan Church for the Downtown Neighbourhood Plan. He was storming around because he had to talk to the consultant leading the project about something he was mad about. That consultant was Jennifer Keesmaat. She’s a Toronto bigshot now and recently refused to do a retrospective interview with me about that Plan. But back then, she’d even talk to Steve.

3. VACANCY FATE The first story I covered in depth for Prairie Dog was the Condominium Conversion Controversy. Between 2008 and 2009, the city faced numerous requests to convert rental (often affordable) units into condominiums. Over the same period, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Regina’s rental vacancy rate was plunging to effectively zero. Despite the condominium policy being pretty clear that council couldn’t approve a condo conversion when the vacancy rate was below three per cent, council approved all but one conversion. For years afterward, CMHC cited the loss of those rental units to condo conversions as a factor prolonging the city’s affordable housing problems.

4. THIS SUCKS PER CENT A low rental vacancy means fewer places for renters to live. The higher demand for housing also leads to higher rents. Regina’s 2006 vacancy rate was 3.2%, which dropped to 1.7% in 2007. From there, the vacancy rate was 0.5% in 2008, 0.6% in 2009, one per cent in 2010, 0.6% in 2011, 0.9% in 2012 and 1.8% in 2013. No surprise, rents shot up over that period with an average increase of 14.3% in 2008, 10 per cent in 2009, 6.8% in 2010, 6.2% in 2011, and 4.7% in 2012. Many tenants saw their rents double in four years. While the vacancy rate started to recover in 2014 (it now sits around 6.7%) and rent increases have plateaued, the cumulative impact of the late aughts on the rental market is still hurting renters and low-income families.

5. THE LOWEST POINT Forty-six affordable apartments at 1755 Hamilton St. were demolished in April of 2012 at the height of the rental crisis.

6. STONED IN GERMANY The City Square Plaza (now the Pat Fiacco Plaza) paving stones came from Germany. Originally, the Plaza was to be open to two-way car traffic and the city couldn’t find a local brick maker who could make pavers that could handle that amount of stress.

7. PAINFULLY BRIGHT Remember when the Plaza pavers were so new and smooth they could blind you when the sun reflected off them? They made my daughter cry.

8. WHITHER WATER? The Plaza stage was supposed to include a dancing-waters fountain that could be activated when it wasn’t being used for events. That plan was abandoned but the city had already purchased the fountain infrastructure. It presumably sits in storage somewhere.

9. SPINACH AND FETA FOREVER Robert Gardikiotis, Copper Kettle owner and a champion of Regina’s downtown, died on Feb. 29, 2016 at 81. I only interviewed him once. He wanted the Plaza to run down Scarth Street in front of the businesses instead of along boarded up 12th Ave. fronts. Robert was an awesome guy and he was right about the Plaza.

10. DING DONG GONE The downtown glockenspiel was removed to allow for construction of the Plaza. It wasn’t put back up until citizen historian Kenton de Jong spotted it in a storage yard while he was looking at Google satellite images of the city. The media storm from his blog post compelled the city to restore the glockenspiel to its former glory.

11. KILLING CHARLIE In September 2010, to symbolize the start of the Capital Pointe project, then-mayor Pat Fiacco swung a sledgehammer spraypainted gold at a Plains Hotel wall. A year earlier, the band Deep Dark Woods turned news that the hotel was doomed into the CBC Great Canadian Song Quest track, “Charlie’s (Is Coming Down).” Capitol Pointe never materialized.

12. NO SALE Plans for a new Mosaic Stadium in the rail lands were derailed in 2012 when CP decided to not sell us all of their property in the warehouse district like we thought they would. Cursed railways!

13. ROOF PROOF Remember how the province said the new stadium had to be “roof ready” if Regina wanted to secure a sweet, no-interest loan? Current estimates say putting a roof on the thing would cost over $200 million. Apparently, “roof ready” didn’t have to equal “roof possible.”

14. MASON RAGE In 2011, an architecture firm shared images online they’d been hired to produce of a new downtown library branch. It would have included a hotel/convention centre tower and taken up the entire northwest quadrant of the library’s block north of Knox Metropolitan Church — including the Masonic Temple. Nobody told the Masons about the plan to buy and bulldoze their building and boy, were they were pissed! In the end, they refused to sell which kiboshed the plan and flushed $400,000 in feasibility studies down the drain. The project looked like a beached cruise ship, anyway.

15. MISSING MAYOR For much of the last half of his final term as mayor, Pat Fiacco was all but absent. His council attendance rate hovered around 50 per cent. In response, Prairie Dog ran a poem titled “The Mayor Who Wasn’t There” featuring Dr Seuss-inspired artwork by Dakota McFadzean. Though a pen name was attached to it, it’s time you knew the truth: Steve wrote the poem. Not me. IT WAS ALL STEVE! STEVE WROTE THE POEM!! I took so much heat for that fucking thing.

16. WE’LL TAKE IT During his farewell speech to the City of Regina, outgoing mayor Pat Fiacco had this to say to Regina’s media: “Thank you for telling the story. I know that you can only do it in sound bites. And you can do it in only so many words. But thank you. I’ve seen what the media can be like to public officials. And in this city, for the most part, you’ve been very respectful. I wish that one addition, Prairie Dog, would be more fair in their commentary than one-sided … and disrespectful to those of us that have a job to do. But to the rest of you, thank you.”

17. IS THAT YOUR FINAL ANSWER? I was sitting in Henry Baker Hall as Pat Fiacco gave his “Farewell And FU To Prairie Dog” speech. I only asked one question during his last press scrum as mayor: “What are you going to miss about being mayor… I mean, apart from Prairie Dog?” To which Fiacco replied, “Good one.”

18. GUY IN THE BRIGHT RED SPORTS CAR The 2012 mayoral election was a gong show. If you thought Def Dancing Bob Pearce’s 2020 mayoral campaign was cuckoo, I have three words for you: “Hot Wheels Novak”.

19. ALSO In 2012, Bryon Burnett edged Tina Beaudry-Mellor out of a council seat in Ward Four by 34 votes, thereby changing the course of Saskatchewan politics.

20. THE GREAT REGINA REFERENDUM Michael Fougere’s first big test as mayor was the Wastewater Treatment Plant Public Private Partnership Controversy (WWTPP3C). Local activists gathered thousands of signatures on a petition to stop the P3. They filled Henry Baker to protest when the city clerk said they didn’t have enough signatures to force a referendum. Fougere called a referendum anyway. There was a televised debate. The pro-P3 side won. Epcor runs our WWTP now.

21. GUY IN THE BRIGHT RED SPORTS CAR, PART 2 If you ever wondered why there is a chain separating councillors from the gallery, I have three words for you: “Hot Wheels Novak”.

22. WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THE PROBLEM? In 2013, Mayor Fougere held a housing summit in the Hotel Saskatchewan to address the city’s low vacancy rate and high housing prices (see items three and four, above). Local anti-poverty activists led by University of Regina professor Marc Spooner booked a Shadow Housing Summit down the hall on the same floor. Fougere was not amused.

23. HOLE STORY By 2018, Capital Pointe was still a hole at the corner of Victoria and Albert. About a hundred people gathered to say “Wow” at the hole, like Owen Wilson. It was finally filled in 2019. Council granted the new owners a one-year permit for a temporary surface parking lot on the site. Like Capital Pointe, the parking lot failed to materialize.

24. MONEY PIT When the city got a 31.5-year mortgage to buy a stadium, the naysayers were told, “The financing is rock solid! Only a massive calamity could disrupt our models!” Three years after opening: Covid.

25. IT ONLY TOOK 97 YEARS In 2020, Regina elected its first female mayor, Sandra Masters, who unseated incumbent Michael Fougere.

26. A ROCKY START Masters’ term started clusterfuckilly when a motion from new councillor Dan LeBlanc to end oil and gas company sponsorships of city facilities provoked a threatening tweet from Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. Council backed down, but our petro-stooge premier should’ve butted out.

27. WHEN BIGOTS ATTACK Virtual council meetings during Covid meant right-wing homophobic groups from across North America could speak against a council motion to ban conversion therapy. Council passed the ban, but not before nearly breaking my spirit with days of delegations and offensive questions.

28. TERINA TROUBLE 2021 to 2022: The Era Of The Shawbacle. ‘Nuff said.

29. PETTY POLITICS Holy hell. The Homelessness Funding Lawsuit Saga: still ongoing.

30. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! Wow, this has been a fun tour through 15 years of negativity. And yet, plenty happened over that time that I thought was awesome. For instance: passing the Sustainability Framework, lowering speed limits in school zones, the (updated) Housing Incentive Policy, the Downtown Neighbourhood Plan (I love it even though it’s generally ignored), restoring Globe Theatre and Darke Hall, two rapid housing projects (just in the last year!), mâmawêyatitân centre, new dog parks, saving the Cooke House, electing four progressive councillors and a woman mayor (still a good news story despite everything).

Hey, if I didn’t find city council fascinating and at least occasionally uplifting, do you think I’d still be doing this? Yeah. You’re right. Probably. ■