Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association is holding its annual convention in Regina this week. SUMA recently raised concerns to proposed changes to the Canadian community building fund. The changes are geared toward cities of 30,000 or more people with the emphasis to use the funding towards affordable housing and substantially increase reporting requirements for those municipalities. SUMA Vice President of Villages, Resort Villages, and Northern Municipalities, Mike Strachan said this is worrying as smaller areas may not apply for the funding, as they will not be able use it in a way that makes sense for their communities.

He says it takes a lot of time to report to the provincial government and federal government and the benefit of this program right now is that there really isn’t a lot of red tape to obtain the funding, which ultimately goes to a community’s infrastructure such as water treatment plants, sewer systems and road upgrades.

He added  that there are not that many funding opportunities for municipalities in Saskatchewan, and a loss of infrastructure funding will ultimately fall onto ratepayers having to pay more in property taxes to cover some these deficits that they do have. The convention runs April 14 to 17th and on Wednesday morning there will be the bear pit session with Saskatchewan cabinet. (with files from discoverweyburn.com)