Pulling the plug on Station 20 West

Hope Takes A Beating

SASK. PARTY FUNDING YANK PUTS INNER-CITY COMMUNITY PROJECT IN PERIL
By Meshon Cantrill
Planet S, Saskatoon

On 20th Street in Saskatoon, an ambitious project that many see as an excellent example of the “hope beats fear” mantra used so prominently by the Sask. Party in the 2007 provincial election campaign has been stopped dead in its tracks — by, ironically, the Sask. Party government. Right at the point when tenders for construction were ready to go out, the provincial government pulled $8 million in funding from the Station 20 West Community Enterprise Centre, money that was committed by the previous NDP administration.

For Saskatoon’s inner-city population, it must seem very much a case of fear kicking the crap out of hope, once again.

The residents of Saskatoon’s core neighbourhoods face challenges that other people in the city may often not even comprehend. The lack of available services of all kinds is a major difficulty, and when transportation costs can account for a significant portion of monthly budgets, residents’ ability to buy healthy food is curtailed — especially when that food is a very long bus ride away.

Food is a necessity, obviously, but there are also many other important needs, such as health, childcare, cultural and library facilities, that simply aren’t an option for some people in Saskatoon.

Fortunately, members of the core neighbourhoods have long been finding solutions to the challenges facing their communities. David Forbes, MLA for Saskatoon Centre, is encouraged by the creativity he sees coming out of the core neighbourhoods.

“The wonderful thing about my riding and the folks in it, [in] Riversdale and Pleasant Hill, is they’re such fertile beds of innovation,” he says.

To its proponents, Station 20 West is an example of just that kind of ingenuity — a community-based solution that aims to address issues and challenges facing the inner city of Saskatoon by housing, among other components, a community health centre, space for community-based organizations and a co-operative grocery store. And the list of organizations who were elated at the opportunity offered by Station 20 West is neither short nor inconsequential: it includes the Saskatoon Health Region, Child Hunger and Education Program, Quint Community Economic Development Corporation, Westside Community Clinic, the Colleges of Medicine and Dentistry, and a consortium of other colleges and partnerships from the University of Saskatchewan.

According to Janice Sanford Beck, coordinator for the proposed Good Food Junction Co-op, Station 20 West began as a community plan to address the urgent need for a local grocery store in Saskatoon’s core neighbourhoods — which have been without one for over a decade — and simply grew from there.

“When other groups heard about what was planned they were really excited,” she explains. “It grew into Station 20 West with the grocery store as one piece of that project.”

But on March 20th, the Sask. Party announced that they were pulling the plug.

Opposition leader Lorne Calvert was unimpressed, to say the least.

“In so many ways this is a very progressive, forward thinking project, and I find it very difficult to believe that the government can’t recognize that. I don’t understand why they didn’t just embrace it.”

Probably because they didn’t understand it. The Sask. Party has offered a variety of conflicting excuses based on inadequate information. (Finance Minister Rod Gantefoer, for example, stated the funding was pulled due to Station 20 West’s $20 million cost — when in reality, the project carries an $11.5 million pricetag.) The confusion isn’t exactly surprising, because the government had effectively stopped communicating with the Station 20 West board.

“The meeting that they had promised in a couple of letters never did occur. They made the decision [about the funds] without discussing it with us,” says Len Usiskin, member of the Station 20 West board and manager of Quint Development Corporation.

The letters that did come from the Saskatchewan Party included redundant requests for information, and displayed a lack of knowledge about information that had already been provided by the Station 20 West Development Corporation. Apparently, either the ministers involved weren’t speaking to each other, or they weren’t bothering to read their mail. Especially problematic was the timing of the government’s surprise announcement that the funds would be taken away, says Usiskin.

“We were days away from going to tender. We were planning to put out the tender for construction this week, and so this was really pulled at the eleventh hour. We’re still going to have to spend a lot of money just to pay for the services that have already been rendered for all those architects, engineers and surveyors,” he says.

Despite what the government intimated when attempting to justify their reasons for pulling funding from Station 20 West, both organizers and the former NDP government make very clear that this project was not a “deathbed promise” hatched up at the last minute by an NDP government desperately seeking re-election. Instead, work on the project had been going on in the community for years before the provincial government committed financial resources.

“The final decision-making happened last year, and that was after all the due diligence had been completed,” says Calvert, who was premier at the time the money for Station 20 West was allocated. “I just keep reminding the government, and the public generally, that this wasn’t a project that was the conception of the provincial government — or for that matter, the New Democratic Party. It grew right out of the community. It is a community-based project, and we became a partner.”

What’s that, you say? An initiative by the people, for the people? Sounds like — gasp! — democracy!

(MIS)INFORMATION HIGHWAY

Though a cynic might suggest that the mountain of misinformation that’s been dumped into the media by the Sask. Party was a calculated effort to confuse the issue, it was more likely a predictable result of the party failing to recognize the significance of the project — and perhaps a misguided desire to trample what they believed to be an NDP legacy project. But whatever the root cause, the result has been several persistent myths about Station 20 West that continue to circulate in discussions about the centre and the government’s role in it.

The budget for the project currently stands at $11.5 million, meaning that, counting the now-rescinded $8 million in government funding, $3.5 million was left to be acquired from other sources — a far cry from the roughly $12 million the Sask. Party initially suggested Station 20 West organizers had left to raise. Moreover, the $75,000 in donations that was cited by Finance Minister Rod Gantefoer as a sign of weak support is only a small portion of received donations, as it covers only contributions from private individuals. In fact, financial guarantees have already been collected for ten times that amount, with further support totalling over $1 million currently in consideration — all before an official, wide-spread public fund-raising campaign has even been kicked off.

Just in and of themselves, the mistakes the Sask. Party have made with even these basic figures suggest they should rethink their decision, says Calvert.

“If the decision was made on erroneous information, then clearly that’s a good reason to revisit and reverse the decision. It’s hard to believe that the correct information wasn’t available because I know it has been available to government, and made recently available through the Station 20 group,” says Calvert.

Moreover, the assumption that the Sask. Party’s current budget would be impacted by allowing the Station 20 West funding to stand is also erroneous. Instead, the $8 million had already been allocated by the former government’s 2007 budget, and was held in trust by the Saskatoon Health Region. The decision to take it back came at budget time, but the money wasn’t part of any Sask. Party budget — it came out of surpluses garnered by the previous government, notes Calvert.

“With some exceptional revenues from oil and gas last year, we ended up with another $100 million in the surplus. We decided that the best use for that was in long-term investments and one of them was Station 20,” he explains. “The arguments that are made by the Minister of Health — that these dollars are required for other purposes — just doesn’t hold water, because the dollars were already expended out of last year’s budget, and there’s a mountain of money sitting in the fiscal stabilization fund.

“It doesn’t need to be an either/or,” he adds.

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