When a bylaw is brought up for a vote at Weyburn City Council, the process is generally to give the bill its first reading, and then have a discussion. The bill is then brought back at a future meeting for the second and third reading, dependent on changes, tweaks and more.

Monday night, a bylaw was before Weyburn City Council and was passed immediately with no debate, no discussion, and all three readings. However, this wasn’t a case of the councillors trying to speed through the process. It was more of a quirk of the situation.

“We originally passed the changes to that bylaw back in November of last year, then for whatever reason, the province didn’t get it and get it filed so we just had to kind of re-do it today,” explained Councillor Jeff Richards after the meeting.

The bylaw passed originally in November was repealed as part of the passing of the new bylaw as well.

The Building Bylaw was designed to replace the original Building Bylaw which had references to the Uniform Building and Accessibility Act. In 2021, the province replaced the Uniform Building and Accessibility Act with the Construction Codes Act. This meant that any bylaw references to the original act needed to be updated.

When the original bylaw was passed in November, two certified copies were to be submitted to Building Standards for ministerial approval. The provincial government, however, stated that they never received the copies. This meant that Weyburn City Council had to approve a new bylaw, which was the exact same as the one originally passed in November, and re-submit it to the province for approval.

So, what were the changes from the original Building Bylaw, passed in 2012, and the new Building Bylaw?

The definition of what a designated officer is as per the bylaw was included, as well as a definition of what the bylaw meant by unsafe conditions. As well, a section about unsafe conditions was added, as there are code-related minimum standards set out in the National Building Code.

The time that council spent passing the bylaw was perhaps the fastest that Richards had seen a bylaw get passed, from its introduction to the first, second and third reading, to the final vote.

“We really don’t like to pass them that quick, and for sure like to do it over a couple of meetings, but this one was just done three months ago, so we thought we could probably do it again that quick,” Richards chuckled.

The bylaw, however, wasn’t the only thing on the agenda for Weyburn City Council Monday night.

The council received a number of reports from the various departments. This included a look at the building permits for the month of January, the monthly report from the Public Works Department, and the Water Treatment Plant monthly report for January.

One of the reports that was presented was the tax arrears report. The report, prepared by the City Assessor, showed that there were 141 accounts that were in arrears. The total amount owed from those accounts was nearly $375,000.

In addition to the reports, there was a tender approved by the council for the purchase of a wide area mower for $95,407.83 from South Country Equipment. The mower, which is being purchased for the Parks and Facilities department, only had one tender submitted. There had been $100,000 budgeted for the purchase of the mower.