398 Mountview Road, Yorkton
Welcome to this unique spacious family home located 1/2 block from Columbia Elementary School. The kitchen features newly painted white cupboards, linoleum flooring and is complete with fridge, stove and dishwasher. The living room is complimented with large windows from wall to wall, gas fireplace, laminate flooring and a beautiful beam and vaulted ceiling. The fenced back yard offers mature landscaping, interlocking block patio area, large storage shed and play area for the children with built-in swing and slide and a hot tub for the whole family to enjoy! MLS® #: SK852053
$239,000
Bill Harrison 306-621-8007
269 Hamilton Road Yorkton • 306-783-6666 bharrison@remax-yorkton.ca
©2017 RE/MAX, LLC. All rights reserved. Each office is independently owned and operated.
Volume 47, Issue 42 Price - $1.52 plus GST
Your Community Connection
Return undeliverable items to: Yorkton This Week 20 Third Ave. N., Yorkton, SK S3N 2X3
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Staff Photo by Tanner Wallace-Scribner
Remembered Children’s shoes and stuffed animals were placed to remember the 215 children found buried in a mass grave at the site of former residential school at Kamloops, B.C. recently. The memorial is one of several that have been created around the
city including orange ribbons hanging in many trees. Flags were also at half mast at City Hall, and a minute of silence was observed at the regular meeting of Yorkton Council Monday.
City sets mill rate and tax policy By Calvin Daniels Staff Writer The City of Yorkton might have achieved a zero per cent increase on the municipal side of property taxes, but since 2021 is a re-evaluation year in terms of property assessment, Yorkton
Council approved a number of moves to mitigate the impact of those value changes. While our residential properties typically lost value, not all of them lost value at the same rate. Some neighbourhoods had values hold rather than decrease, and some
saw values decrease at a larger rate. Further to this, we have condos and apartments whose values often saw some increase or did not decrease by the average, explained Ashley Stradeski – Director of Finance with the City at the regular meeting of Yorkton
Council Monday. Our goal was to minimize the impact within the residential sector, especially given that this was a year with a zero percent increase to taxation revenue, he added. The first step was to have Council approve a $35 hike in the base tax
from $795 to $830 on all residential properties. “The base tax is a tax tool that we have as a Municipality that allows us to set a rate that is charged equally to all households. Upon doing so, we can guarantee that no matter the value of any property, we will collect
a certain amount from them before applying the mill rates to the property value. This amount in its total will allow us to subtract it from the total tax needed and thus have a lower mill rate overall,” detailed a report circulated to Council.
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Phase in for commercial taxes set By Calvin Daniels Staff Writer The City of Yorkton will be phasing in changes to commercial property taxes caused by the recent provincial reassessment. These property assess-
ments are based on information such as property sales, building permit information, cost information, as well as income information obtained by SAMA through its income verification process, explained Ashley Stradeski – Director of
Finance with the City at the regular meeting of Council Monday. “While the City is not increasing the tax it’s collecting this year, we do recognize that property revaluations can have an effect on how much tax a property owner can pay,
sometimes significantly. To offset this, we are proposing a Commercial Property Tax Phase-in to offset the volatility that could be experienced due to the revaluation,” explained his report circulated to Council. In order to do a phase-
in of tax changes, we had to come up with some criteria as to who we are phasing in and why. In analyzing criteria, fairness to all commercial property owners was one of the main factors, and as such we are recommending that we phase-
in all tax changes for all commercial property owners over a 3-year period, explained Stradeski. This will have the impact of reducing any change to taxes from prior year for property owners by two-thirds
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Mosaic closing two Esterhazy shafts By Tanner Wallace-Scribner Staff Writer The Mosaic Company has announced the immediate closure of the K1 and K2 potash mine shafts in Esterhazy.
Closing the K1 and K2 are key pieces of the transition to the K3 mine shaft, which has seen its completion date increase by nine months. Sarah Fedorchuck, the vice-president of government and public affairs for North
American with The Mosaic Company, explained their decision to close the mines. “We closed the K1 and K2 potash mine shafts in Esterhazy due to a recent acceleration of brine inflow. The foundation of our Esterhazy transition
plan is to eliminate this risk and substantial cost by shifting potash production from the existing mines to K3. As part of our phased inflow exit strategy, we began a controlled withdrawal last year, with the final sprint initiated in January
when pumping and grouting were further reduced,” she said. “As expected, we began to see increased inflow rates with lessened mitigation. Recently, inflow volumes have risen faster than our models predicted. We knew these mines
were nearing end of life because of inflow, and Mother Earth operates on its own timetable. In the context of 36 years of management, nine months off is pretty good.”
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Councillor raises administration concerns By Calvin Daniels Staff Writer Yorkton Councillor Darcy Zaharia wanted to discuss the sale of the old City Parks Building at 263 Myrtle Avenue. What followed at the regular meeting of Yorkton Council was a lengthy discussion about the safety of the building, the accuracy of the information given to Council by City
Administration and a return to the much-debated City Operations Centre currently under construction on York Road. Zaharia began by showing a video from March 2020, where Trent Mandzuk - Director of Public Works, told Council the Parks Building was contaminated and was simply unsaleable. The issue was hydrocarbons
in the soil, and gases were feared to be escaping into the building. “The City will forever have that liability... You can’t sell it,” offered Mandzuk. But the City did receive an offer on the building, $50,000 as is, from Sno Riders to use to store their equipment. So how could a building that was said to be unsaleable suddenly sell, questioned Zaharia,
Coun. Chris Wyatt said the initial statement about it being too contaminated to sell looks to be part of “a push to build a building of this scope (the facility on York Road,” suggesting Administration was making the push when the Council of the day was “wanting to spend a lot less money.” “Now we’ve sold the building,” he said. Wyatt suggested the mixed
messages were troubling. Councillors “are not experts in every aspect of the city,” so they must trust that they are being given the best and most accurate information by staff, he noted. Without a trust in that, “this job becomes almost impossible,” he said, adding it leaves Council second-guessing things.
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