Tank: The billion-dollar budget and the white picket fence

Two weeks ago, Saskatoon city council passed its $1.14-billion budget for next year.

Just prior to that, council dealt with a controversial issue. Not user fees for garbage collection — an oddball white picket fence in the Nutana neighbourhood.

What does a gargantuan city budget have to do with a fence? Nothing really, except that when the city’s budget becomes that big, the residents who pay for it often wonder whether their money is being spent wisely.

Residents fund nearly half of the city’s budget through property taxes that rise every year. Next year, taxes will increase 4.4 per cent to pay for a budget that will be remembered mainly for lacking memorable initiatives.

A few minutes of acrimony among the 16 hours of debate stand out, but that’s about it.

But the city’s second run at a picturesque little fence at 10th Street and Eastlake Avenue could linger in people’s minds.

The fence surrounds three homes built more than a century ago that are now considered condominiums. They lack backyards, so the fence, built to resemble an original fence on the property, provides residents with an enclosed yard at the front.

After a complaint was filed in 1999, city hall targeted the Victorian-style fence for demolition, deciding it was built too close to the sidewalk.

Residents dispelled the axiom that you can’t fight city hall, which backed down in response to support for the fence, some of which poured in from across the country.

Those who engage city hall, though, had best be prepared for a generational battle. City hall has once again set its sights on the fence, but in a more indirect way.

Now, the city administration has decided the practice of leasing land to residential property owners must end. And it just so happens that a certain fence on a certain street is built on land leased from the city.

There are only six such patches of leased land in the entire city. A report that ate up nearly 50 pages of a city council agenda explained that the leases only yield $2,890.43 in revenue for the city each year.

So what prompted the attack on the scourge of leased land?

There is but one line in nearly 50 pages to explain: “In recent years, concerns have been raised regarding the uneven fence lines along a roadway and the restriction of sight lines.”

That sounds more like a war on non-conformity than an attempt to address a serious issue. It also fails to ring true, since residents have sought approval from their neighbours prior to building the fences.

And we’re talking about six fences in a city of 278,500 people.

A representative from the Nutana Community Association appeared before council to express support for the fence and pan any move that would threaten it.

How much money was spent on this study? Probably more than $2,890.43 in staff time and resources.

City council decided to scuttle the attempt to end land leases to residential property owners and to study the possibility of allowing homeowners to buy the leased land.

Will that satisfy a city hall administration that has apparently waited a generation to take on the white picket fence, which won a civic heritage award 18 years ago?

Well, changes are afoot at city hall with the transportation department that decided the fences had to go. At the same council meeting last month, a new structure for Saskatoon’s municipal government was approved.

One of the most significant changes will split up the monster transportation and utilities departments into two separate entities. Will that temper initiatives like the fence fight, or embolden them?

Judge for yourself. Here’s what acting director of transportation Jay Magus told council’s transportation committee last week:

Magus was responding to concerns about communication in the wake of two contentious proposed road closures this year.

“I guess in short I would say that I don’t see any failure in the communication. Quite often I’ve heard, ‘It’s not that we don’t understand what you’re telling us. We just don’t like it.’ So I took that to be, job well done.”