The city of Saskatoon will hear from local hotel partners Monday regarding a potential deferral for property taxes and utility charges.
Representatives from the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown BID and Tourism Saskatoon are requesting the deferral until the end of 2021. Previously, city council approved a deferral for residential and commercial payments until September 30th of 2020.
The hotel partners suggest that on average occupancy is currently at 24%, down 61% from last year. The group also reports as a result of the pandemic 75 to 80% of hotel employees are currently in furloughed to laid off states.
City administration has set forward multiple options for council from maintaining the status quo, providing both a property tax and utility deferral, or just a property tax deferral. Administration is recommending to keep the status quo as it believes many businesses have been impacted by the pandemic and if the city were to provide financial relief, it might lead to requests from other sectors which administrations says would not be financially feasible.

The city of Saskatoon will look to implement a transportation master plan today during their council meeting.
Currently the city doesn’t have a document that combines all transportation policies and plans from the Strategic Plan, Bylaw 8700 and the Official Community Plan Bylaw.
The Saskatoon Transportation Master Plan would unite all existing plans and policies, organized into three parts. A summary of the supporting documents, a compilation of transportation policies and practices and a section detailing upcoming transportation projects.
If approved the transportation master plan would be consistently updated when new strategic plans are approved and released.