News Releases

Beginning at 7.00 a.m. on Sunday, May 11, 2014, Warman Road will be closed in both directions between 7th Avenue North and 33rd Street as crews repair the road that was dug up over winter.

A detour will be in place. The road is expected to re-open Sunday evening weather permitting and barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Drivers are reminded to allow extra time when travelling through the orange zone, watch for pedestrians and work crews, and for everyone’s safety, please obey all detours, signs and barriers.

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City of Saskatoon (City) crews are working on reducing mosquito populations this spring through the annual mosquito control campaign. The mosquitoes currently being controlled are primarily nuisance mosquitoes. Mosquito control will continue throughout the summer and will also control Culex tarsalis, the mosquito that is the primary carrier for the West Nile virus in Saskatchewan.

Saskatoon residents can assist with reducing mosquito populations, including Culex tarsalis, by eliminating standing water on their property. Mosquito larvae can develop in any water, even small amounts that are allowed to stand for four days or more. To help control the mosquito population you can:
• Remove any standing water from your property;
• Ensure items in and around the property like pool covers, saucers under flower pots, children’s toys, pet bowls, and wading pools are regularly emptied or replaced with clean water;
• Clean eavestroughs regularly so water does not collect in them;
• Empty and clean bird baths twice weekly;
• Ensure openings in rain barrels are covered with mosquito screening; and
• Ensure your yard is free of debris, such as old tires that can hold rainwater.

For more information on the City’s mosquito control program, please visit www.saskatoon.ca (under “M” for Mosquito Control).

For more City of Saskatoon Public Service Announcements, News Releases, Traffic Detours and Service Alerts, visit www.saskatoon.ca or connect with the City of Saskatoon on Twitter and Facebook.

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City urges residents to avoid ticket and towing

City-wide residential street sweeping begins Monday in Holiday Park and is expected to continue for the next six weeks. City and contract crews will be working seven days per week to quickly move through the neighbourhoods each day. 

Approximately $605,000 of additional funding is dedicated from the road levy this year for sweeping programs including the spring sweep blitz and the accelerated residential area sweeping. This allows for additional equipment, contractor resources and maintenance support so that neighborhoods and major roadways can be cleaned quicker, and commercial and business areas will be cleaned more frequently.

Parking Enforcement
In order for sweepers to effectively clean the streets from curb to curb, parking enforcement and tow truck relocating will be used for the entire program.  New Yellow No Parking signs and relocation towing were piloted during a smaller scale fall sweep and will be rolled out city-wide to prevent people from parking on scheduled streets.

The new yellow No Parking sandwich board signs and matching yellow paper signs will be posted at the entrance to scheduled neighbourhoods and along streets at least 36 hours in advance of the sweeping.  Vehicles that remain on the street at 7:00 a.m. will be ticketed $100 under the new Street Maintenance parking bylaw and will be relocated to a nearby street or neighbourhood. If your vehicle is relocated, you can find the new location using the Find My Vehicle! application.

Neighbourhoods with grid streets will be swept in two phases - three days apart – to make parking available for vehicles that need to move.

School Zones
For the safety of students and the convenience of parking for school visitors, school zones will be swept outside the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.  Sweeping will occur up to two days in advance of or following, the neighbourhood’s scheduled date.  School zone boundaries are marked with a 30 km/hour speed limit signs. Watch for no parking signs along these streets when sweeping is scheduled.

If poor weather delays sweeping, the neighbourhood will move to the end of the schedule and new No Parking signs will be posted in advance to notify residents.

A schedule, Frequently Asked Questions and map of neighbourhoods is available at Saskatoon.ca under the Building Better Roads icon.  Drivers are reminded to be patient and to drive carefully when they encounter slow moving street-sweeping vehicles.  You may also contact the 24-hour Street Sweeping Hotline at 306-975-2476 or streetsweep@saskatoon.ca

Starting at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 7, 2014, Saskatoon’s Emergency Measures Organization (EMO) tested the entire database of the NotifyNOW system. Data collected during the test indicated that by 11:25 a.m. more than 14,000 people confirmed they had received the message by either replying to the text message or email, or by pressing 1 on their phone.

The Saskatoon EMO appreciates everyone’s participation and feedback on the test including media assistance in getting the word out that a test would be happening. EMO received many positive phone calls following the test, including ones from people stating they were expecting a phone call.

“When an emergency happens, we need to know the system works and works well. The best way to prepare for an emergency is to do a test like this, identify possible kinks in the system and then solve them,” says Ray Unrau, Director of Emergency Planning. “We got lots of good feedback from residents and we can’t thank everyone enough for their participation.”

On Wednesday morning we were able to test the system in a non-emergency situation to make sure that the infrastructure was in place to distribute a large number of notifications. In this area as well, the test was successful and SaskTel infrastructure was able to handle the volume of calls generated by the system.

This was our first ever test of the NotifyNOW system and as expected there were a number of lessons to be learned. Some of those lessons are about the call display for telephone calls needs to be a trusted and distinctive name or number and that we need to continue our outreach to ensure  entered contact information is correct. As always, emergency preparedness education will continue throughout the City, and will incorporation information about NotifyNOW.

The Saskatoon EMO would like to remind residents to consider whether they received the notification in the best possible way. For instance, if you are often gone from home for long periods of time, receiving emergency notification on your landline may not be the most effective way for the City of Saskatoon to reach you during an emergency. By signing up, residents can customize how they receive messages to ensure that they are notified as soon as possible. Residents can sign-up by going to saskatoon.ca, clicking on the NotifyNOW logo and completing the sign up process. NotifyNOW allows you to enter up to 10 methods of contact and up to 10 addresses that you would like to receive emergency notifications about, for example your child’s school or elderly parents home. For step by step information about how to sign up please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qak-iNP8J_8&feature=youtu.be

For more City of Saskatoon Public Service Announcements, News Releases, Traffic Detours and Service Alerts, visit saskatoon.ca or connect with the City of Saskatoon on Twitter and Facebook.

 Members of the public are invited to attend a commemorative event as the City of Saskatoon joins municipalities from across the country to reflect and honour the commitment made by the men and women who served in Canada’s military in Afghanistan.

Earlier this year, as the last of Canada’s troops made their way home from Afghanistan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared May 9, 2014 a National Day of Honour and on May 5, 2014 City Council resolved that the City would join municipalities across Canada in observing a concurrent moment of silence.

His Worship Mayor Don Atchison will be speaking at 11:25 a.m. on Friday, May 9 in the Civic Square which is located at the south side of City Hall.  The ceremony will include a lowering of the flag and two minutes of silence.