The Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association Convention finished yesterday around lunchtime. The four-day event saw around thousand delegates from across the province meet in Regina to see presentations, seminars, a trade show and meet with members of the Saskatchewan Legislature.

Marcel Roy went for the second time as Mayor of Weyburn with other councillors and City of Weyburn staff. It was also Weyburn City Councillor Jeff Richards the second time of going to the convention since his election in 2016.

"Lots to learn and lots of new things happening all the time. Very interesting. A good opportunity to talk to some other cities as well and to see what they are doing."

Richards said the transfer payments from the provincial government was a topic of conversation that came up many times.

"We are very fortunate in Weyburn, that we have been very well managed, financially we are not in some of the crisis modes that some cities are in. For sure we have to pay attention to whats going on," said Richards.

At yesterdays cabinet session, which is called "The Bear Pit" province promised to sit down with the SUMA Board of Directors to discuss revenue sharing and Grants-in-Lieu. Weyburn lost $837,912 with the grants in lieu being cut. Grants-in-lieu is money from provincial Crown corporations, federal government agencies and municipal utilities to cities instead of paying property tax on buildings. Grants-in-lieu from the provincial Crown corporations SaskPower, SaskEnergy and TransGas were cut last year to help the province balance the budget within three years.

Richards is thinking about the Impact this is going to have on Weyburn's Budget.

"The City's property tax revenue is around $6-7 million in that area, that doesn't cover the costs of operations for the city. We rely on a lot of things, User Fees and for sure Transfer payments from the province."

Richards said the second biggest topic of conversation was the Cannabis legislation.

"There's so, very much more work to do on that before we are ready to have the stuff legalised."

Municipality police services are the ones who will be enforcing the laws around Cannabis and so the question has been asked of how revenue from cannabis will be directed and will there be extra funding for law enforcement.

Richards went to the question time session with Dustin Duncan, Weyburn-Big Muddy and Environment Minister. He asked Duncan, "Are we going to see a continued confrontation with the federal government around the carbon tax versus a made in Saskatchewan plan?"

"We believe that this government is trying to do the right thing but we need to understand more clearly how this is going to flow out."

"He (Duncan) was very candid when he said they don't believe a carbon tax is a right answer, they believe reducing emissions is the right answer."

Richards said there are a lot of things that Saskatchewan are doing well in this area including sequestration of carbon, which does not get public recognition.

Richards was told they are going to do better to improve communication of those things.