The City's Infrastructure Services Manager says Saskatoon residents have been victims of the weather, and is blaming the conditions of Saskatoon's back alleys on the 2nd wettest 3 months in 100 years.

May, June and July this year was the second worst in a decade. 2010 was the wettest on record.

The question was called at Council last night (Mon) when Councillor Pat Lorje asked what kind of funding was in place to take care of the City's alleys.

Mike Gutek stated his crews need a good stretch of dry weather before going in and fixing the alleys. The City has a 300 thousand dollar budget to fix alleys, which is enough money to fix each alley.

But Gutek says in wetter years, they need to divert some of that money to alleys that keep getting destroyed by rain, because of their poor design.

The City is reporting a small surplus after 2 quarters this year. City Manager Murray Totland says the construction sector again stood out. The surplus so far this year is just over 80 thousand dollars.

The 3 million dollar budget surplus from 2011 will be headed off to fund some deficits found from last year.

City Council approved taking the 3 million dollars and paying off 800 thousand dollars in unexpected fuel costs, and a 636 thousand dollar deficit in the snow removal and ice removal program. The rest of the money will be put into a stabilization reserve, for any other unexpected costs in the future. That reserve now sits at 4 point 3 million dollars. 

And contractor Golder Associates Limited will be coming out with a detailed report on the Nutana slope failure some time next month. Work from Golder Associates is still continuing, as they conduct surveys of the ground, and continue to monitor slope movement.

Infrastructure Services Manager, Mike Gutek says they can't confirm what caused the slope failure back on June 20th, but they can confirm no City infrastructure or action from the City caused it to fail.

The summarizing report will be before the City some time in mid to late September.

[ED Aug 15/12]