It was announced in June's provincial budget, and became official Tuesday afternoon. Wakamow Valley Authority is losing their Urban Parks funding from the province. 

In 1981 the Wakamow Valley Authority Act was signed, which provided Wakamow with $127,000 annually to help care for the land through Wakamow Valley. In recent years, that annual allottment was topped up to $157,000. 

However, the Sask Party government announced in the budget that all Urban Parks funding would be cut for 5 municipal parks in Saskatchewan, including Wakamow.  At the time, they indicated they would have to amend the WVA Act to eliminate the funding clause. 

Following Question Period Tuesday afternoon, the amendment was put to a vote in the Legislature and it passed, with Moose Jaw Wakamow MLA and Moose Jaw North MLA Warren Michelson both voting in favour of the amendment. 

"We were voting for government," said Michelson. "We understand, and everybody understands that it's been a very difficult budget year so difficult decisions had to be made.  This budget was about controlling spending."

"With record investments in revenue sharing...Moose Jaw received over $7.2 million last year," offerred Lawrence. "We thought as a government that municipalities would be in a better position to absorb that (parks) funding given record increases."

That revenue sharing was presented to the city in February and allocated to other areas of the municipal budget that was approved in March. The parks funding decision was not announced until budget day June 1.

"The budget was late this year because we had an election (in April)," said Lawrence, who said further discussion surrounding the amendment will have to be held with the interested parties. "Additional meetings will have to be held with Wakamow and the city to make sure we understand and recognize their interests with what is going on in the park."