The Circle Drive South project looks to be opening up at the end of July.

"We are very optimistic," said project manager Doug Drever.

"If we have some bad weather for a long time it may effect it but right now we are completely optimistic about having it traffic ready at the end of July."

Crews have been busy working on the project putting down asphalt and paving.

"There is probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 40 days left of paving," explained Drever.

Saskatoon Public Library workers have a new contract following three years without one.

The agreement, which was reached with the help of a mediator, gives library employess a sever per cent raise over three years.

Broken down, it means a $2 increase for library pages, who typically earn minimum wage, and a two per cent increase for other workers in the first year. This is followed by a two per cent and a 60 cent an hour raise in the second year and a three per cent raise in the third year.

Despite sunny skies and warmer temperatures, the City of Saskatoon continues to feel the effects of a six-month winter.

Heading to city council on Tuesday is a report from the city's corporate finance department, showing an $850,000 budget deficit.

The majority of the increased spending came in light of the expanded pothole patching blitz and a shortfall in revenues from Saskatoon Light and Power, said the city's corporate finance manager Kerry Tarasoff.

Many were pleased to hear this on their radio during their morning commute; traffic is flowing normally again at Circle Drive North and Millar Avenue following the unexpected early completion of some major road work.

Last week, traffic had been reduced to one lane in either direction. It was expected it would stay that way until they end of the month. Instead, Chris Hallam with the city says crews finished the work two weeks early.

A successful pilot project has the City of Saskatoon outfitting its fleet of 145 buses with a new GPS tracking system.

“We’ve tried this system on 29 existing buses just to make sure it’s compatible. It’s fully up and running on those 29 buses,” said manager of utility services Jeff Jorgensen.

With this new system, transit riders can track when the next bus is coming and where it is on the route using their smartphones. 

The possibility of food trucks hitting Saskatoon streets this summer took a significant step forward on Tuesday.

On May 14, the city’s planning and operations committee reviewed the proposed food truck policy compiled by the city’s planning department.

This policy was before the planning and operations committee in March, but after discussion of the specifics around buffer zones, the number of truck per block and the ability for BIDs to approve more locations, the committee sent it back to the administration for further review.

After a big jump in the price of the North Commuter Bridge in Saskatoon, the mayor and city councillors had their chance to review the project, which ended in a debate about the Traffic Bridge.

The city’s executive committee had a lengthy discussion on Monday on whether or not they should bundle the North Commuter Bridge and the Traffic Bridge into one project.

The recommendation to bundle the two bridges was to build a case for more federal and provincial funding.

There might be a bright side to the long winter after all.

"Albeit all too late, it has been a good spring for delaying a lot of insects coming out," said Geoff McLeod, pest management supervisor for the City of Saskatoon.

The snow melt brought flooding around the province but McLeod said it is making life hard for mosquitoes. He said the water is drying up fast or soaking into the ground around Saskatoon.

"The cool temperature of the water is slowing down the larval development as well," he explained.

"You combine those and so far so good."

Despite an extra-long winter, the city’s parks department says they’re only one day behind when parks and recreational areas were scheduled to open.

“We’re hitting the ground running now, it kind of caught us by surprise,” said parks manager Wayne Briant.

“We figured (the melt) was going to be much slower than it was.”

In mid-April the city’s parks department said minor leagues would have to wait for the beginning of the baseball and soccer seasons because there was still a foot of snow on the ground.