Provincial By-Election Likely to Result in City By-Election This Fall
Aug 31st
Breaking news this morning that Saskatoon-Northwest MLA Serge LeClerc has tendered a letter of resignation in Regina. This paves the way for the Sask Party government to call a by-election in Saskatoon-Northwest sometime within the next few months.
As previously discussed here on this blog, Ward 5 City Councillor Gordon Wyant is the nominated candidate for the Sask Party in the Northwest constituency. Councillor Wyant has already indicated that he will take a break from City Council during the writ period. Should he win the by-election in Northwest, which has been a Sask Party Seat since 2003 with LeClerc winning handily in 2007, it is all but certain that Wyant would resign his City Council Seat.
Assuming this all happens before October 2011, that would force a by-election for the vacated Ward 5 Council seat.
Currently, there has been no indication of whom might consider running in such a City by-election.
Saskatoon Recycling Survey – The results are in, and….
Aug 14th
Recycling has been a primary focus of this blogs (sporadic) postings over the past couple of months. In addition, yours truly has found himself speaking out in both print and television media advocating for the creation of a city-wide curbside recycling program for Saskatoon.
At the end of June, the City launched the first portion of it’s recycling consultation with Saskatoon residents with the mailing of a large brochure and creation of a website that were an attempt at education. Included in those informational pieces were details on four options for the make-up of Saskatoon’s future recycling program – #1 do nothing; #2 subsidize private curbside pickup; #3 expand the current deopt system; #4 city wide curbside recycling. I made it quite clear that I found this consultation to be both lacking in detail, not well planned, and the presentation of the four options before Saskatoon residents to be biased and confusing, a view I still maintain. In conjunction with this part of the “consultation” the City undertook to survey residents on which of the four options they most supported, through both a phone survey and online survey. Again, I found the content of those survey’s to be convoluted, confusing, and More >
We Get Press Clippings – Star Phoenix Editorial on Recycling Consultation
Aug 5th
The Star Phoenix published my editorial today. In the editorial I rebutt some of the arguments made against a city-wide curbside recycling program by Cosmo Industries in their editorial from last Friday.
For a look at a good back-and-forth debate with a proponent of Cosmo’s position, have a look through the comment section of my last post (here).
Cosmo Industries, SP Editorial, My Rebuttal
Aug 3rd
The following is an editorial I submitted to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on Friday (July 31, 2010), in response to an editorial written by Gary Nickel of Cosmopolitan Industries on the topic of recycling. No word yet from the SP if they intend to publish it or not.
Time to get serious about Recycling
It was unfortunate to read the mis-leading arguments being put forward by Cosmopolitan Industries over the current recycling debate in our city (Think beyond the “blue box”, July 30, 2010).
In their article and through their on-going information campaign, Cosmo has been presenting misleading statistics about the amount of recycling Saskatoon currently undertakes. Moreover, they continue to make the false argument that a move towards a city-wide curbside recycling system (Option 4 in the current recycling survey) would see their organization’s clients without jobs because recyclable materials would no longer be source separated.
What Cosmo fails to mention is that most curbside collection programs involve separation of recyclables by households prior to collection. Additionally, at no point has any city official or any curbside proponent suggested that a city-wide curbside recycling program would exclude Cosmo, SARCAN, or Saskatoon Curbside Recycling. Infact, our city administration has attempted over the last two More >
News And Notes: August Edition
Aug 24th
Posted by Sean Shaw in City Council
1 comment
It appears that my new job has nearly zapped my ability to keep this blog upto-date over the past weeks. In my defense it has been a relatively slow summer. So, I figured now would be a good time to dump a few municipal tidbits on whatever readers I have left:
1. Possible Municipal By-Election:
Ward 5 Councillor, and Sask Party Candidate for Saskatoon-Northwest, could possibly find himself contesting a Provincial By-election this fall. Word has it that the Sask Party would very much like to see current Saskatoon-Northwest MLA Serge LeClerc vacant his seat as early as this Fall. Such a series of events may be a long shot, as the recently turned Independent MLA has been granted a medical leave of absence from his elected duties, boarded up his offices, and is residing in Ontario, seemingly content to draw on his MLA salary until the General Election in November 2011. However, should Mr. LeClerc be “convinced” to retire, Councillor Wyant stands a good chance of retaining the seat for the Sask Party in a by-election. Wyant has already indicated that he would resign his Council seat if elected to the Legislature. If this were to happen before October 2011, the More >