Saskatoon to bid for major music awards show, e-scooters set to stay

Discover Saskatoon was unanimously approved for $500,000 to help with its bid towards bringing a major national music awards show to the city.

The money is contingent on the application process and would be allocated from the city’s reserve for major special events.

Because of non-disclosure agreements signed by Discover Saskatoon as part of the bidding process, it’s not known what major national music awards show it bid for.

CKOM has reached out to both the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Awards for comment on whether Saskatoon bid for either of those events in 2026, but did not hear back at the time of publication.

Saskatoon was supposed to host the Juno Awards back in 2020, but it was cancelled at the last moment because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Funding support is also being requested from the province for $1 million.

Ward 4 councillor Troy Davies thinks it’s worth putting the money towards the proposed bid.

“I see that this is another huge opportunity for us to invest into our tourism, hotels, small businesses and getting Saskatoon back in those that circulation of major events. We need to get back into those conversations,” Davies explained. “There is a lot of benefits here.”

E-scooters to remain in Saskatoon

Saskatoon city council has decided that e-scooters are here to stay in the Bridge City.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, council unanimously approved to end its e-scooter pilot project and make it a permanent fixture going forward.

A pilot program in the city with e-scooter companies Neuron and Bird began in the spring of 2023 and ended in the fall of 2024.

Throughout the two-year project, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said there were 163 visits to an emergency room due to e-scooter-related injuries, ranging from minor to serious.

There was also one fatal e-scooter crash that occurred in late June.

Saskatoon’s shared e-scooter pilot began in 2023 and finished in the fall of 2024. (Céline Grimard/650 CKOM)

While helmet use was not reported by all patients, only about 44 per cent of riders admitted to wearing one.

The health authority’s data did not distinguish between shared or private e-scooters, although private e-scooters are still not permitted in Saskatoon.

For just over an hour, councillors raised concerns about helmets and the parking of e-scooters but ultimately decided to pass the new rule.

Ward 3 councillor Robert Pearce thinks the decision by council is a step in the right direction.

“I do believe in a progressive city, we do need to be looking at reasonable alternative sources of transportation,” Pearce said.

“I do believe a lot of the issues we’re seeing here are about growth issues as we expand our look at this. I do think at some point we’re going to have to have a conversation about private e-scooter use in the city and whether that’s something we’re going to do or not.”

With the approval, the city is now looking at taking the next steps for making the scooters a permanent fixture.

City administration will now publish a request for applications to potentially award a maximum of two vendors operating a total of 500 shared e-scooters in Saskatoon.

The vendors applying will need to sign five-year contracts and a $22,000 fee, plus GST each season and $100 for each designated parking area.

The fees are the same as the two-year pilot.

New busses coming to Saskatoon

The city has decided to go ahead with the purchase of 21 new buses to replace some of its aging ones.

It will spend $17 million on 17 40-foot diesel buses and $5.6 million on four 60-foot diesel buses. Three access buses are also being purchased, which will cost a total of $923,900.

The total cost of the new buses is $23.5 million.

Initially, the city was going to purchase some electric buses through a federal grant called the Zero Emission Transit Fund (ZETF) – but in Sept. 2024 their application was denied, which led them to this decision.

The City of Saskatoon has added two new electric Nova LFSe+ buses to its public transit fleet. (Payton Zillich/650CKOM)

The buses are expected to arrive in either the fall or winter. By the end of 2025, the average age of the buses being replaced will be 8.6-years-old – the industry standard is 7.5 years.