There are five mayoral candidates in the 2024 Saskatoon civic elections. 650 CKOM sent out a Q&A to each candidate. The election is on Nov. 13, 2024.

Cary Tarasoff

Hometown: Saskatoon

Embarrassing playlist song: “Something Stupid” by Benedetta Caretta and Hauser

Why do you want to be Mayor of Saskatoon?

Our city has a host of issues that are failing or poorly conceived around planning and development of all scales and types. My 35 years of development experience allows me to see problems before they get enacted and to help better inform my fellow councillors of problems when I see them. Having the Mayor of Saskatoon who is a professional planner and a professional technologist, who also was a trained leader as a military officer gives our city a great chance to clean up issues and to move forward with better thought-out solutions for our future!

How do you plan to address homelessness, given it’s not solely a municipal responsibility?

The location and type of care given so far are not realistically up to the task. I have been striving to work on a long-term plan which can give dignified care in a purpose-built setting that is removed from residential and commercial areas. This plan has been vetted by experts in the field for this care and politically at the highest level of our provincial government. The construction methods and deployment of this system have also been discussed by those with direct construction experience of this type. There are other purpose-built, modular, treatment facilities built in Canada using this premise.

What makes you hopeful?

Our people and our spirit. We are known as a people who help one another. In the early days of TeleMiracle, we broke records for how much we gave to such a small population. But beyond money, our citizens are always willing to give of themselves to help others in ways without fanfare and recognition. With so many diverse people willing to serve their community, we will find a way forward and we will overcome anything that comes our way!

What do you think should be the city’s priority given Saskatoon’s upcoming major projects, the debt and how do you plan to fund them?

We have too many wants and we are avoiding taking care of the obvious needs. Extravagant projects to lure people with glossy visuals and vague descriptions are little consolation when roads are falling apart or waterlines are continually breaking. The debt we have had for the past eight years carries on. Any time they finish off some debt, they immediately continue the same debt for some other purpose. So we are wasting vast sums of money on interest and long gone are the days when we comfortably lived within our means with surplus funds in the bank.

Saskatoon can not afford a 1.22 billion dollar DEED (Downtown Event and Entertainment District). Contrary to what some will tell you, the DEED is not on a shelf either. It is actively being carried forward by people already paid by the taxpayers of Saskatoon. Huge sums have already been spent on purchasing land without actual project approval yet from the council. Now the council has approved the TIF (Tax Incremental Financing Plan) going further on this funding model. Even though the KPMG report on this directly stated that the DEED and the TIF itself will cause all Saskatoon taxpayers to bear additional costs for this area for the life of the project. So anyone who says they won’t vote for anything that would add one cent to the taxpayers of Saskatoon is not being honest. This cost will last for approximately another 30 years until the DEED would be paid off. But that is assuming they can keep on a budget when no major civic project has been on the budget in recent memory.

Do you have a talent few people know about?

I can write backwards fluently in cursive handwriting. I taught myself this in grade 12 when I was bored with school and couldn’t wait to be free of that forever. Then I ended up with another four years of university and two years of tech college! So much for being free of school forever!

What superpower would you want?

Time travel. To go back and change mistakes and to travel forward to see opportunities ahead of time.

What are the top three items you would address in your first 100 days as Mayor?

Start active discussions with the Province over the problems with the Fairhaven Shelter and plan on a purpose-built facility in the far north light industrial area of the city.

Stop all work on the DEED that is funded by the Saskatoon taxpayers. Then work with the CEO of TCU to see what more reasonable efforts could be put in place to help expand our downtown convention capacity to add seven days a week, morning, noon and evening activities to our downtown core.

Work to bring forward simple city bylaws that can further assist police work on our streets that I have already identified and that have also already been vetted as helpful.

Change safety standards for all front-line civic employees of Saskatoon to ensure their safety and dignity. Whether this be at a civic center, or on a city bus. Our people deserve respect and the ability to deny service to those who are repeatedly violent to them.

Work with the police commission to ensure we have more full constables on the streets of our city. So less ARO (Alternate Response Officers) and more fully capable regular constables work day and night for our safety. Urge the police commission to implement any capability required to create and operate a Warrant Squad as identified in the Sanderson Report. A detailed unit that actively hunts the 10 most wanted criminals on our streets and, when arrested, goes directly back to jail. Then they move down to the next 10 on the list and so on.

Ask the fire chief to change how our fire services respond to very costly “Lift Assist” calls throughout the year. Taking a full fire truck of highly trained personnel and a costly vehicle, to a location to help stand someone back up on their feet. And at times, repeatedly to the same location for the same person over the year.

If we provide this service where needed, then we do so with a light vehicle and two lessor-trained individuals. And perhaps we start charging for-profit care homes that regularly call for this service. I expect these facilities to have their own trained and paid individuals to accomplish this need and the Saskatoon Fire Service should only be called when absolutely necessary.

How do you plan to address the challenges of population growth in areas like infrastructure, housing and public services?

We need to grow inwards as much as possible but we cannot make vast changes to existing single-family housing areas that are a major part of the fabric of our city. Our infrastructure is not prepared for continual growth either. We have hundreds of unreadable road signs in Saskatoon. Drive into the city and then you are unable to read which highway turn is your destination, for example. Simple things get missed for years yet we have new signs up 23rd street for a Wayfinding Route (combined bicycling and walking zone) that doesn’t even have sidewalks in places along the street? While our current Mayor and city council were unable to spot these simple things before they voted things through, having a technical person at the helm will enable our city to stop more silly mistakes before they go further and waste more money and time.

For many years, my wife and I have directly identified and tracked all vacant, boarded-up and abandoned properties in Pleasant Hill and now even Mount Royal and Westmount. Those numbers kept increasing for the past two administrations and the level of crime also increased. Yet there are many groups who would build good family homes to repopulate these areas again to what they were designed for. An increase in homes will add to the safety of the area as more people are likely to watch out for their properties and will engage with police if required.

How will you engage residents to increase municipal voter turnout in Saskatoon?

Do a better job of explaining what you plan to do and, if elected, show people that their comments to the city council are an integral part of a working democracy. Too often people are disillusioned with the city council because they will carry on with what seems to be a private agenda that was not publicly explained beforehand. Too many ‘in-camera’ meetings are some of these issues. I will work to reduce this instead of letting the city use this excessively without real need just to keep open information from reaching the citizens of Saskatoon.

What would you tell your 21-year-old self?

Be bold. But always keep educating yourself. Lead with intent and purpose but also keep an eye on the performance of the things you have started that are now behind you. If you spot a past decision that is becoming a failure, do not be afraid to stop, identify this failure in clear terms, if possible, install a correction and then move on again. LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES! You may accidentally make new mistakes but you should never keep repeating predictable ones.

Finally. Take time to stop and embrace life. A few lines from an Air Force poem “High Flight” says it all in my head – “Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings . . .”