Saskatoon mayor hopefuls square off in debate ahead of civic election

Four candidates vying to be Saskatoon's mayor squared off at a televised debate on Wednesday night.

Four Saskatoon mayoral candidates had their chance to challenge each other on various issues during a televised debate Wednesday night.

The debate was hosted by the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce and featured former city councillor Cynthia Block, former MLA Gord Wyant, former mayor Don Atchison, and Cary Tarasoff.

As per an announcement at the outset of the debate, candidate Mike Harder wasn't invited to participate, because the debate features the top four mayoral candidates who have "engaged the chamber throughout the election process."

The quartet debated topics like city responsibilities, rising taxes, and business attraction before moving on to more specific topics like homelessness, the downtown event and entertainment district, and the housing accelerator fund.

"It would be really great if other orders of government were taking responsibility for their jurisdiction. Unfortunately, I just don't think that the residents of our city want us to squabble about jurisdiction when we're facing very serious issues in our community," Block said at the beginning of the debate.

Wyant said the city is spending too much time and money on federal and provincial responsibilities, and it's time to get back to the core services, like policing, the fire department, and infrastructure.

"Those are the things that we need to spend time concentrating on. Getting back to the basics in this city...and I think that as we stray away from that, we lose the ability to properly fund those core services," Wyant said.

A question was posed to Atchison about his plan to reduce homelessness by building 100 tiny homes from recycled plastic.

Block said the issue is a provincial responsibility, and a task force should be created alongside other communities to lobby the provincial and federal governments to get transitional housing in place. Wyant defended the province and its revenue sharing program, further stating the city could have decided much quicker where to place shelter spaces.

Tarasoff took the question head on and asked where Atchison wants to place these plastic homes, where water or sewer connections would be needed, and how would they be heated in the winter.

"That's the problem about having a dream," Tarasoff said. "The dream has to be based somewhat on reality, and too often we're getting dreams that sound really good and people take a bite and what they don't realize is that they're biting something that we're going to keep paying for a long time."

Atchison rebutted by demanding specifics from his colleagues, and claimed city council hasn't done enough in the last eight years to help address homelessness in the city.

"Everyone can complain, but no one seems to have any answers. I'm Atch with action, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to solve this particular issue as best we can with the feds and the province," he said.

Other candidates were critical of Tarasoff's detailed approach to his campaign. In the past, Tarasoff has been a staunch critic of city council, regularly commenting on or speaking at meetings with technical questions about engineering or environmental reports and spending.

Tarasoff said this shows that he's done his homework and has an understanding of in-depth issues at City Hall, while his counterparts wondered what his vision for the next 10 years would be.

Candidates were then asked questions about the City of Saskatoon approving sweeping zoning changes in the city to approve the federal government's housing accelerator fund in order to access $41 million, which will build 940 housing units over three years and allow four housing units on any 50-foot lot.

Wyant and Atchison said the city didn't need to rush into a deal that was poorly communicated to residents, while Tarasoff said rapid densification will overwhelm city infrastructure. Block said Wyant's and Atchison's arguments were untrue, and Saskatoon struck the best deal possible with Ottawa.

Candidates were then asked about budgeting and what the city could do to improve its budgeting process.

"We don't have a revenue problem in the city, we have a spending problem," Wyant said.

Wyant said he would implement an eight-point budget renewal plan which will include an efficiency audit on city spending. He'll cap the mill rate and implement a departmental spending and management hiring.

Atchison said he wouldn't raise property taxes next year, while Tarasoff said he would make better use of city reserve accounts.

Block wondered how all of these ideas would affect residents.

"It would not be a hard thing to have a zero per cent property tax increase. The question is, what is the true cost?" Block asked.

On the topic of needs versus wants, many candidates considered the downtown event and entertainment district as a project that shouldn't be a priority right now. Wyant said the city can't pay for it with the funding strategy, Atchison said no one will go downtown until the city can make it safer, and Tarasoff said the city is overselling potential benefits.

"Edmonton has a brand-new arena and Taylor Swift isn't going there," he said. "You can spend all the money in the world and have a huge population, (it) doesn't meant you're always going to get everything."

Block said the other candidates were missing out on the larger vision for the city. She said the downtown event and entertainment district is an infrastructure project like any other, and it can be the transformational change the city needs.

During the roughly 90-minute debate, candidates made sure to compare Block to outgoing Mayor Charlie Clark.

Tarasoff said she is mimicking Clark's approach of solving issues by having roundtable discussions. Wyant said if she was so different than why did she vote the same as Clark 63 times during budget deliberations last year.

Saskatoon’s civic election is set for Nov. 13.