Spring is officially here and the change of season means some changes in the Opportunity City!
The first change is, of course, the switch back to weekly garbage pick-up!
Mayor of Weyburn, Jeff Richards, joined the Country 106.7 Morning Show to chat about that and all the fun spring has to offer!
“Starting this week and into the first week of April everybody will be switched back to weekly garbage pickup,” he said. “We understand that you want to clean up our yards, I mean we really didn’t get at our yard as well as we wanted in the fall so, yes, we will be using weekly garbage pickup too.”
The other thing a lot of residents have already noticed as the snow has been melting is the return of potholes
“We understand that we’ve got some work to do,” Mayor Richards noted. “Last year, we got ahold of this infrared machine that does the pothole patching. The beauty of that machine is it can actually work in temperatures below zero. Not 50 below, but a few degrees below zero that machine can get out and work and do potholes, it takes about 20-30 minutes, and we’re excited to get that deployed a lot earlier this year. Obviously, it can’t fill a wet pothole, we wouldn’t do that, so once it dries up you’ll see that machine on the road a lot more.”
Potholes have been a sticking point among residents lately and, as Mayor Richards explains, a lot of the problems were caused by Mother Nature.
“I know people get sick of us telling this story but when we get these mild winters and then they freeze right away, that is hard on the roads because that water then will get down in the crack, it freezes and then just like ice cubes in your ice tray at home, it expands and it pops the road up.”
He also noted that there is a bit of a challenge going on between himself and the Mayor of Estevan to see who can fill more potholes throughout the year.
As spring kicks off, the City puts a lot of effort into spring clean-up and setting the scene for Summer.
“It’s always exciting when the spring comes. It’s a new energy, right? One of the things that is fun is all that spring cleanup stuff, like Wey-Clean week, that stuff, and all that starts in April and that’s where we’ll start to see a lot of energy, I think, in the City and then the summer students will start to come on in May and June and it’s just exciting.”
Mayor Richards also noted that there will be a lot of things for Weyburn residents to do outdoors, especially as we get closer to summer time, including pickleball, tennis, spray parks and disc golf.
“I’ve got a friend that plays disc golf and he always says that I should join and play disc golf with him and I know we have that disc golf at River Park but we forget about it. It’s way harder than it looks on TikTok,” he laughed.
As an added bonus this year, the outdoor pool is also expected to open earlier than normal.
“Yeah, we’re going to try to get the outdoor pool open as quick as we can. The potential date right now is May 16th,” he said. “Now, if we get one of those early May snowstorms we’re not going to do that but to kind of put that into perspective, that’s about six, seven weeks from now. We’ll also try to keep it open as late as we can into the fall.”
As people start preparing to work in their yards, Richards also sent the reminder that sometimes home and yard changes require a permit from the City
“So if you're going to build a new deck or if you're going to put up a fence or those kind of things,” he said. “If you're just replacing your fence, you don't need a permit for that. But if you're going to build a new fence and you've got to check the height requirements, that kind of thing, you're going to build a deck, you're going to build a garage, for sure, get a permit. I would encourage people to go into City Hall when you do that and talk about the Weyburn Builds program because if you're going to do a bit of a renovation to your house because summer is renovation time, you know, there's some tax incentives available.”
Mayor Richards strongly encouraged residents to check out the City of Weyburn’s Leisure Guide, which highlights all the activities, events, and sports available in Weyburn this upcoming season.