Dogs, snow removal on agenda as YK council starts debating budget

Yellowknife councillors began combing through the city’s draft 2025 budget during their first night of deliberations on Monday.

Over four hours, mayor and council heard presentations from city staff, asked questions, made changes and approved several line items.

City manager Stephen Van Dine said prior to Monday night, city staff had received more than 120 questions about the budget.

“The choices before you at budget time are seldom easy. Easy and quick can be expensive and painful in the long-term,” he told councillors. “Here, through budget deliberations, me and my team will do our best to make sure you have the best available information to inform you about your choices.”

Dog pound need

Yellowknife’s director of public safety, Craig MacLean, and Mitchell Roland, the city’s former manager of municipal enforcement, spoke about the need for the city to improve how it impounds dogs as demand has increased.

The Great Slave Animal Hospital stopped impounding dogs on the city’s behalf in June due to capacity issues. While another provider has agreed to temporarily take on the service, MacLean and Roland said that’s not a permanent solution.

They advocated for council to keep $500,000 in the budget to buy, ship and install a prefabricated 16-kennel dog pound that would be operated by municipal enforcement officers, as happens in Inuvik. They said having a facility run by the city would save an estimated $40,000 annually.

However, city councillors unanimously decided to remove the proposal from the budget, saying further analysis was needed.

“I appreciate all the work done by staff to this point,” councillor Tom McLennan said.

“I’d just like to see further work be done to find an agreement with the private sector or an organization to utilize their skills in existing facilities, before sort-of opening the door to a whole new chapter of MED’s responsibility.”

Snow removal

Chris Greencorn, the municipality’s director of public works, spoke about snow removal and winter road maintenance, a hot topic for many residents.

He explained the city’s current system is based on priority, which allows it to spread out existing resources “in the most efficient and practical manner possible.”

“Frankly, resources and resource allocations, budget, staff, equipment have not really kept pace with priority changes and the increases that you see,” he said. “Resources are limited, both internally and externally.”

Greencorn recommended that the city make a service level change, moving from an 18 to 24-week snow removal schedule. He called that an “easy win” that would not require the city to purchase additional equipment.

“It’s not large but what this does is it gives staff the freedom, I guess the flexibility, to begin snow removal more early,” he said, adding he would provide feedback on the change to councillors.

Councillors appeared supportive of the idea.

Greencorn said if council wanted to move to a different model involving sanding, snow plowing and snow blowing – as suggested by some residents – it would require further work and investment. He said it should not be done “with a large brushstroke at budget” as it would require public consultation, legal advice, changes to bylaws, increased enforcement, a “significant shift” in communications, more equipment and funding for repairs.

“Not being Chicken Little here, this is not insurmountable, but these are things that are considered when we look at expanding service levels,” he said.

Throughout the evening, councillors went line by line discussing capital projects such as retrofits to City Hall, a stormwater-related study, upgrades to traffic lights, the city’s paving plan, and water and sewer infrastructure replacement.

Cuts they made in that section of the budget included a $60,000 project for the restoration of a fire engine and $233,000 to turn the green space adjacent to the Fritz Theil baseball diamonds into a soccer field.

Councillors are set to discuss the budget every evening between Monday and Thursday this week and should approve a final budget on December 9.