CBC Radio One hosts Saskatoon mayoral candidates' debate Monday morning

The city's four mayoral candidates sat downtogether Monday morning for a debate broadcastlive on CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning.

Don Atchison, Charlie Clark, Devon Hein and Kelley Moore tookpart inthe 40-minute debate, moderated by Saskatoon Morning host Leisha Grebinski.

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Road Rumble

The first topic to be addressed was the state of the city's roads. A recent poll showed that the condition of Saskatoon's road infrastructure remains the top issue for many people living in the city.

Incumbent mayor Don Atchison said the city has a lot of work left to do, and that work inside neighbourhoods still hasn't started.

"People are concerned about the pothole in front of their home, not down the street," said Atchison. "But we had to do all the roads and the major arterial collector roads first of all, in order to get where we want to be."

Meanwhile, city planner Kelley Moore said the city isn't getting value for its money.

"The status quo isn't working here for us," she said. "We have seen record increases in our taxes to improve roads...What we're doing is, we're putting bandaids on bandaids. We have to stop the status quo approach of doing things."

Meanwhile, city councillor Charlie Clark said that city hall needs to be careful about which large projects it takes on, in order to have enough money to tackle major issues like roads, while not relying on major tax increases.

"We are going to have to make choices, if we're going to be able to keep taxes down," he said. "We can build a great city without building more great, huge megaprojects, because the neighbourhoods that people live in, we're hearing from citizens, are most important."

Transit Trouble

Transit was another hot topic during the debate. Many Saskatoon Transit users complain that buses are too infrequent, and rides can take too long to get commuters to and from their destination.

"Over the past ten-plus years, Mr. Atchison and Mr. Clark have almost destroyed our transit system," said Moore. "We had the lockout, we had people who don't know when the bus is coming, we have bus drivers that drive right past because they're not informed of their routes, we have low morale in the transit service."

Meanwhile, businessperson Devon Hein said that the situation could be fixed without spending more money.

"At the end of the day, if you go and actually experience transit, you're going to watch seniors struggling to get to their stops, which are so far apart that a lot of people are freezing their feet as they try to get to the places in the middle of winter."

Saskatoon Transit also continues to be locked in long-standing labour troubles with its employees, which climaxed in a lockout in 2012, mainly over changes to the union's pension plan. However, the race's incumbent isn't apologizing.

"We are not going to give the transit people a veto over the plan," said Atchison. "They're still talking about job action with us. We need to have certainty into the future."

Crime conundrum

Meanwhile, Saskatoon's crime rate continues to be the highest in the entire country.

Clark said there needs to be a new focus in how to prevent crime.

"I very much agree with Chief Weighill that you cannot arrest your way out of crime," said Clark. "The problem in our community, right now, is that we have divisions between our mental health, our addictions staff, our police, our justice system, and it's not serving our people. 70 per cent of the calls our police officers are going to are health, addiction, family breakdown, or minor disturbances. They're stretched to the limit."

Moore was concerned that the city's crime rate continues to be very high.

"When Mr. Atchison became mayor in 2003, we had the highest crime rate," she said. "In 2016, we still have the highest crime rate. Clearly the status quo is not working for us, and we need to change the way we do this."

However, Atchison noted that the overall crime rate has been shrinking for years, and credits that to current tactics.

"Our crime rate is down by 40 per cent," he said. "That's not enough. But it's been moving in the right direction for many, many years. Part of that is because of (the current strategy."

River rumble

The fate of the Meewasin Valley Authority was the debate's final topic. The organization in charge of the South Saskatchewan riverbank in Saskatoon closed its interpretive centre this summer, and the MVA worries that it will soon lose all of its provincial funding.

Clark believes more needs to be done to pressure the province to continue giving the riverbank money.

"When the budget's been established and announced, and the minister said they're questioning whether there will be funding, I will not shrug my shoulders and say, 'Well, I guess there's no more cookies in the cookie jar," said Clark. "That was a real moment where I thought we needed leadership in the mayor's chair."

However, Atchison said taking a hard-line stance with the province would be counterproductive.

"When you're working with other levels of government, it's all about relationships," said Atchison. "Going out there and demanding more money, when they tell us there is absolutely no more money there, others are cutting back...We've almost received a billion dollars in funding from the other two levels of government since I've been the mayor. The reason being are the relationships we've been able to build."

Debates could sway votes

Recapping the debate, StarPhoenix city hall reporter Phil Tank said it was hard to pick a winner from the debate because all the candidates did well in getting their messages across.

"Don Atchison saying people should stick with him because of experience, Kelley Moore saying people need a fresh perspective and Charlie Clark somewhere in between the two of them," Tank said.

However, because of the debate-style format candidates spent a lot of time talking over each other. If anyone won from listening to and watching thedebate online, Tank said it wasvoters.

"I think it's going to come down to leadership style and I think debates like the one this morning are really going to play into people's decision making."

The municipal election will be held Oct. 26.