YORKTON - If you are a regular follower of Yorkton Council -- given it is the level of government which most directly impacts day-to-day life and the one we have easiest access to, to voice our views we should be – then you will find it interesting how individualistic we end up.
Over the course of time there will be a long list of people taking the opportunity to make presentations to Council.
Many of those presentations will include a request for support – usually in the form of funds.
While the requests are not specific to an individual they are most often focused on a group of people in the city.
This week at Council for example proponents of the sport of pickleball appeared noting a need for more courts, and representatives of the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery were also on-hand to seek additional dollars.
Now there is no denying the art gallery is an important cultural component on our city.
And any time a sport sees numbers growing it’s a good thing in terms of general community physical fitness.
But, in both cases – art gallery and pickleball – they directly impact a specific group. That is to say funds for pickleball will not impact as many as resurfacing Broadway Street, or building a new public works building.
Of course a city needs art and sports and similar aspects to be a community.
So Councils are left in something of a squeeze.
There are always requests for money, dressing rooms for the Junior Terriers, a vision for the need of a basketball-focused field house, a bicycle pump track, more pathway paving, pickleball, another football field, more art gallery funding and the list could go on.
The dollars involved range from relatively few to millions, but in most cases is money that might be categorized as non-essential spending.
The community would not be as nice without such amenity spending, but it’s not an investment of the same importance as upgrading the sewage plant, or mitigating the flood threat.
But alas those kinds of projects cost millions and the sticker price seems to always be trending higher.
As a result we see taxes on a near constant climb – costs demand it.
But, at some point there has to be a limit too. For the working world wages are finite, and there will be a point of breaking in terms of taxes we can collectively afford to pay.
And there is Council, knowing tax hikes are never popular, and wondering when the final straw breaks on that side of the ledger, and also still having a long list of financial requests – good ideas from good community people – with bigger picture community needs.
Balance is of course the answer but each of us would chose different projects to fund and others to reject, so it will never be easy for Council.
