The Rural Municipality of Moose Jaw may have denied city hall’s landfill application, but that doesn’t mean the city will now reveal how much it paid for the land, city council says.
City administration presented a report during the Aug. 26 regular city council meeting about departments’ activities during the second quarter — April 1 to June 30 — of this year. Included in the document was information about engineering services’ work on the solid waste management venue project.
The report indicated that engineering services had drafted a conceptual design in Q2 and planned to finalize it in the third quarter. Furthermore, city hall completed stakeholder and public consultations about the project and had planned to produce a report for Q3.
Meanwhile, the City of Moose Jaw had planned to buy 156.09 hectares (390.23 acres) of land north of the community — surface parcel No. 104136511 NE ¼-20-17-26-W2m — for supposedly $5.9 million, based on budget estimates. However, that fell through after the RM council denied the city’s discretionary use development application permit.
Also, city manager Maryse Carmichael approved an $85,000 scope change for the future solid waste management venue concept plan.
City hall continued to address the current landfill by signing an agreement with Pinter & Associates Ltd., to conduct a biannual airspace assessment of the existing venue, the report said. Furthermore, the municipality planned to complete a comprehensive assessment of landfill operations, with Pinter also conducting this review.
The city paid Pinter $30,715.68 to conduct the landfill airspace assessment, while it paid the contractor $44,578.32 to conduct the comprehensive review of the dump. The available budget for both was $6,065,710.
During the Aug. 26 meeting, Coun. Heather Eby reminded residents that the city’s discretionary use application failed and the land purchase did not go through because of that rejection.
“I had a call asking me about how much we paid for that land. And I said I believed it was still a confidential number, and as we know, it is still a confidential number. However, somehow, the person had the number,” she said.
“I just think it’s important to remember that even though … it’s reported in (the report) … some of that information is still confidential,” Eby continued.
“And as councillors and administration, we all know that it is incumbent upon us to keep that number confidential because we are not doing anybody any favours by sharing that.”
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Sept. 9.
