About a month ago, Christopherson-Cote found out city council had cut $50,000 in funding for that water supply as part of a larger budget item eliminated during budget deliberations.
Never been so ashamed of paying my taxes, before.
In response to an inquiry from CBC, City of Saskatoon spokesman Braedan Hafichuk said there are other options for people to use, such as public water fountains, water filling stations and cooling locations.
I’m failing to see the issue with not putting more plastic into the environment.
The problem is that the other measures may not be enough for some people to avoid heat stroke.
Filling stations require you to have an existing reasonably clean bottle to fill. Drinking fountains require there to be one located within a reasonable distance to whatever else you’re doing. And some of the people who were being given the bottled water were drug-addicted or metally ill and off their meds, which might not exactly do wonders for their planning ability.
Handing out bottled water isn’t really the best way to fill the gaps, but it’s easy to get bottled water, so the only problem is deciding how to pass it out. Any other solution requires more upfront planning, and likely more investment.
Sounds like an argument for more drinking fountains.
Yes, that’s another workable solution, but one that requires more planning and upfront investment (and possibly negotiation with landowners in some areas). For the two-plus years it would take to get the additional fountains through city budgeting, planning, finding contractors etc, the bottled water would still be needed.