Henry Baker Hall gets frosty as mistrust blooms like winter thorns
City Hall | Paul Dechene
Looking to cool off from this certainly-not-global-warming-augmented unseasonable heat? You could pop down to the new Wascana Pool, which opened June 8 and features not only a lap pool, leisure pool, diving tank, water slide, lazy river and climbing wall but also all-gender change-rooms, a regenerative water filtration system and solar panels.
But pools are for those who like fun. If you, like me, hate fun, you could hang out in Henry Baker Hall where the air is not only chilled by city hall’s AC but also by positively frosty emanations from council.
After a stormy seven months of budget battles and court hijinks, our council is far from back to a cheerful normal. But they are still powering through some lengthy agendas filled with important stuff.
If you do find yourself chilling in the gallery and are wondering what the heck is going on, here are my Top Five Summer In City Council items that are either resolving this month, or setting up meetings for the sweltering season and beyond.
1. FEDS PUT MONEY PEDAL TO HOUSING METAL Great news from the May 31 meeting of executive committee! No, really. Council unanimously and enthusiastically approved administration’s request to pursue $36.2 million in funding from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund.
If successful, administration will use the money to cultivate building approvals for 1,100 new housing units by the end of 2026.
It’s an incredibly ambitious timeline and would represent a singular public investment in the city’s housing sector.
To qualify for the HAF program, city administration has developed an 11-point action plan which they say focuses on supporting residential development in the city’s core neighbourhoods, with a special emphasis on increasing the supply of affordable housing. But administration also notes their plan will lay the groundwork for greater housing diversity in all established neighbourhoods.
The housing action plan is still in its infancy; the details will be hashed out and brought to council in stages assuming our Housing Accelerator Fund bid is successful.
But seeing as we have councillors who’ve openly expressed skepticism about the value of residential density and have even actively worked to block zoning changes that would enable housing diversity in established neighbourhoods,* it’ll be worth keeping an eye on how this program develops.
2. REAL DISTRICT NEEDS A DOGHOUSE If you need evidence that council has yet to forgive REAL for the Experience Regina fiasco, look no farther than the seven hours they spent over two meetings discussing REAL’s modest borrowing request to cope with lingering revenue shortfalls due to the pandemic.
Effectively, REAL asked for council permission to renegotiate their bank debts so that they’d be able to borrow up to an additional $3.4 million — an amount that would still leave them under their $21 million dollar debt limit. REAL CEO Tim Reid argued this borrowing was necessary because the last quarter year of the pandemic was particularly devastating for their bottom line and they need to borrow to cover their summer expenses. He expects that once they’re through event season, REAL will be back to a balanced financial position.
In the past, anytime REAL came to council with funding or borrowing requests, moods were pretty chipper and the outcomes, predictable. REAL manages city-owned recreation facilities, so of course we’d want to make sure they have the funds to operate.
But the questioning this time around was notable for how thorough it was — and how humourless. When council was done with REAL’s management at their May 17 meeting, Councillor Bob Hawkins described the interrogation this way: “Much of the discussion we’ve had this morning, although not directly, has raised the question, is it a good idea to have REAL? Are they being managed in an appropriate financial way?”
Hawkins argued that REAL’s good work could not be denied. But it was clear several councillors have lost faith in the management of the municipal corporation.
A public report from the independent review of the Experience Regina debacle is expected in June. It will be interesting to see how, or if, that moves council’s opinion of REAL.
3. SCARTH SURVEYS The city is just finishing up an online survey about what to do with Scarth Street downtown. It asks for feedback on three possible futures: keep it a pedestrian-only zone, open it to limited drop-off/pick-up traffic, re-open it as a full one-way street for cars. It’s too soon to know how that survey will turn out but it’s possible city administration may have shot themselves in the foot with their surprise-reveal “scientific” phone survey from earlier this year about the downtown arena. Several councillors seemed enamoured by the phrase “scientific poll” and they were quite happy to disregard the results of the online arena survey.
Online is the domain of Twitter blowhards and irrational malcontents, don’t you know.
However, beheard.regina.ca consists largely of online polls and has emerged as city administration’s main mode of public engagement. By dangling a professional phone poll in front of council for the Catalyst misadventure, they may have undermined faith in their own, much less pricey outreach tool.
Don’t be surprised to see the Scarth survey treated with some suspicion while results of direct consultation with BIDs and businesses treated much more favourably.
4. GOOD TIME LIBRARY’S COMIN’ DOWN At their May 22 meeting, the Regina Public Library board voted to relocate their downtown branch to a temporary rented space. The move is expected to happen in the fall of 2024. They say this is being done because of the central branch’s dilapidated state and noted that they voted in September of last year to demolish it and build a new central branch. Their preference is to keep the new library in the same space as the old one.
That this vote happened shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. There’s been talk about tearing down central branch for at least 15 years. Library lovers are organizing to resist this move but this is the most resolved I’ve seen the RPL board be on the central branch question.
Regardless of how this progresses, it will be interesting to see if the Catalyst plan to twin the library with a downtown arena reemerges. While that idea was soundly rejected by the public in all the Catalyst Committee’s surveys, we know how council feels about online polls now and Mayor Sandra Masters has said that no ideas for the library or arena are off the table. Presumably then, if the city can find federal or provincial funding for a joint library/arena complex — a Librena, if you will — council will go for it. And as there’s a provincial election coming in 2024, a surprise funding announcement should not surprise anyone.
5. IS THIS BAD TV? As I’m writing this, council still hasn’t decided what to do with that integrity complaint against councillors Andrew Stevens and Dan LeBlanc for their decision to take city manager Niki Anderson to court for not including full operational funding to end homelessness in the 2023–24 draft budget. But I’m certain that before too long they’ll all come together and resolve this amicably and everything will return to normal.
HA HA HA HA HA! As if. This is NEVER ending! We will be relitigating the events of the last year forever because, SURPRISE! We’re all dead and this is Purgatory! Only, it’s like Lost and they keep telling us it’s not Purgatory, why would you even think that? This is something else entirely! Like the story of a fully functioning municipal government! You’re not being punished for anything!
The finale won’t disappoint you at all. ■
* Have you forgotten how the first draft of our new zoning bylaw would have allowed duplexes as infill in R1, single-family house zones — the most common residential zone in the city? And how Councillor Hawkins led the charge to stop that dead? Yeah, I haven’t.