The City of Lloydminster is looking to implement an accessibility plan mandated by Saskatchewan legislation.
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The legislation has been in effect for a few years, however, the deadline to implement the plan is fast approaching.
“Back in December of 2023 the Accessible Saskatchewan Regulations came into force. This required public sector bodies, which includes us, are required to develop an accessibility plan under the Accessible Saskatchewan Act,” said Ryan Hill, financial planning and analysis manager with the City of Lloydminster.
The city has until December 2025 to complete the plan, which will the be updated every three years.
To offset some of the costs in developing the accessibility plan, the Targeted Sector Initiative was identified as a potential funding source.
“This was a Saskatchewan city managers’ initiative undertaken within the last three to four months. We divided the province up into regions,” said city manager Dion Pollard.
“It was only (required) for municipalities over 10,000.”
After consultation with other Saskatchewan municipalities, Warman and North Battleford were identified as potential partners.
The plan will give the city an opportunity to make local facilities more accessible.
“The accessibility plans for each facility will provide recommendations and then high-level pricing for those recommendations. From there, we’ll present to city council and can have a discussion on what priorities we want to make and how we want to implement that in the future,” said Tracy Simpson, executive manager of community development services.
Coun. Justin Vance asked if the two municipalities still needed to approve the required funding for the project.
“We’re going to take the lead on the application. As part of that application, they have to provide us with a letter of support committing the funds to us,” said Hill. “We won’t be able to put our application in without their support.”
When it comes to being a border city, Vance asked if there were separate accessibility requirements for Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“This is new legislation in Saskatchewan, it’s something we would be following from our Saskatchewan facilities. There’s no equivalent legislation in Alberta, so we would likely default to the federal level on that side,” said Simpson. “We saw an opportunity to leverage the funding and the work being done to look at all our city facilities.”
Clarification was also provided as to who would be doing the consulting for the plan.
“The City of Regina took the lead on that. They used P3 Architects (P3 Architecture Partnership) out of Regina as their lead consultant and referenced them to the rest. They put together the package for all the cities in Saskatchewan as to what the cost would be and so forth,” said city manager Dion Pollard.
Pollard also clarified the procurement policy would be figured out with the other two municipalities they’re working with once they get their grant.
If the grant were to be unsuccessful, council would reevaluate what they’re looking at for accessibility.
“If the grant was unsuccessful, we could look at that list and trim it down and focus on our larger facilities,” said Simpson.
The legislation is mandating the city create this accessibility plan. Simpson, however, says it’s a good opportunity for Lloyd.
“I would say that some of our older facilities could benefit from an accessibility audit and review to look at how we can improve them,” she said.
Council passed a pair of motions to submit a grant application to the Targeted Sector Support Initiative and commit $64,624 to complete the accessibility plan.
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