Roads, taxes, pickleball: city listens to residents’ questions

From garbage bins to roads to pickleball courts, the City of Regina welcomed all kinds of questions at an open question and answer session at city hall Tuesday.

The session had many different stations set up for a wide variety of services the city provides, including roadways and waterworks.

Concerns about cost of utilities, road work

Robert Wuschenny had concerns about how much taxes and other living costs have been going up.

“My pension goes up by about one per cent per year, some pensions don’t even do that, but everything else seems to go up three, four, five, six per cent and so if you do the math, it just doesn’t work,” Wuschenny said.

Wuschenny also said he didn’t want to see another bin for composting added to his other two bins he already has.

“Somehow we need to work so maybe two is the maximum, with smaller lots and that sort of thing you don’t want your whole yard filled up with bins,” he said.

Ron Bezo wanted to voice his concerns about the current shape of the roads in the city.

“I think we’re getting further behind in maintaining the streets,” Bezo said.

He said the city worker had agreed they were getting behind in the roadways.

Contingent of pickleball players call for more courts

But the most popular station at the beginning of the night was for the city’s different recreational sites, where over 30 pickleball players had come out to voice concerns over a lack of courts in Regina.

The City of Regina’s Kim Onrait speaks to a group of pickleball players during an open question and answer session at Regina City Hall on Oct. 23, 2018. (Britton Gray/980 CJME)

“We appreciate this chance to speak to the city managers and make sure they realize how desperately we are looking for more pickleball facilities,” Karen Rust, president of Pickleball Regina, said. “Our sport is growing like mad, we went from five founding members in February of 2017 to 504 today (Tuesday) when I checked the list.”

Rust said one of the outdoor courts they have is at the Lakeview Par 3 golf course tennis courts, where they managed to set up six temporary pickleball courts.

While there are a few smaller ones in the city, Rust said they aren’t big enough to accommodate the large groups of people who come out to play.

“We will get together, like a whole bunch with 50 people, and we’ll play and rotate amongst each other and we visit and it’s a good social activity as well as exercise.”

Along with more outdoor rinks, they also want to see an indoor facility they could use as well.

Rust said the meeting was promising Tuesday night, with the city indicating some money in the next budget could go towards pickleball facilities.

While pickleball dominated the questions early, throughout the evening other topics were brought up as well.

Mayor: “a chance to talk to people”

Mayor Michael Fougere said they wanted to hold the event to give residents an opportunity to give their opinions on city services as they city prepares their budget.

“We’ve done some other outreach exercises in the past little while but this is another way to have a chance to talk to people and see what their concerns are,” Fougere said.

Fougere said some of the concerns people had brought forward to him included higher taxes and whether fire and police services should be separate or a part of a person’s tax bill.

The mayor said it was the first time the City of Regina had done something like this and that something similar could be done again in the future.