The provincial budget dropped last Wednesday in the Saskatchewan Legislature and it was a document that has to be looked at as positive, from a Yorkton perspective.
This week's front page story on the $1 million announced for a new Parkland College Trades & Technology Centre to finalize planning is something this city has long looked forward too.
The facility is one which will have huge local benefits beyond its direct educational opportunities.
As Mayor Bob Maloney noted, "It's going to be a multi-million dollar project." He added once built it will be a major benefit to the city as it will be good for area students facing lower costs to post secondary education, will help local business with trained staff, and grow the city's population.
The city also wins with more money in municipal transfers.
With a modified formula relating to new monies transferring to municipalities from the one point of sales tax revenue - where 50 per cent is targeted at municipalities facing population growth pressures - Yorkton will receive an additional $361,000 in 2013.
That is a significant increase locally, large enough that had it existed in 2012 the city would have finished the year with a small operational surplus, rather than having to trim transfers to reserves in order to balance the bottom line.
Shelwin House also received a five per cent bump in funding. The additional $18,000 goes to an organization long respected in our city for its work helping women who are facing abuse. Such social funding support is always a positive.
So Yorkton fared rather well from a budget which even the Saskatchewan Party admitted previously was going to be a tight one.
And therein lies what should be something of an overriding concern for voters.
The Saskatchewan Party has been boisterous in pointing out how the province's fortunes have taken a dramatic move forward under their tenure.
We have all heard the stories, the population surging past one million, record potash, oil and gas and other mineral exploration. Jobs being created. Farmers enjoying record grain and oilseed prices.
And these are not smoke and mirror suggestions. We have all seen it. Here in Yorkton two canola oil crush facilities, potash mine expansion and exploration all around us, and a city where we see home and business construction booming, things are good.
Austere budgeting in the face of strong economic times suggests a government which has never fully grasped the actual economy of the province so as to accurately judge revenues and as a result has pushed spending beyond its mean in recent years.
They point to budgets being balanced, but like a business owner pulling funds from their home account to pay bills, or from the kid's college fund, the province has relied on its rainy day fund repeatedly. Yet there appears barely a cloud in the sky let alone rain in terms of the economy if government forecasting was simply more accurate.
The government has also gleaned dollars from the Crowns, at a time they are facing major infrastructure upgrades to deal with the province's growth. Forcing Crowns to borrow while using their profits to bolster the bottom line is again worrisome.
So yes Yorkton fared well this time around, but it is to be hoped the Saskatchewan Party gets a better handle on what its real revenues are so that its budgets are balanced on their merit, not by dipping into other sources to find dollars to pay the bills.
