There will be property tax increases in the next 2 years, but the City of Saskatoon’s Interim Chief Financial Officer says they have tried to keep them as low as possible in the preliminary budget. Clae Hack explains that through public consultation, the priorities for Saskatoon residents are to maintain services and lower property taxes, so that’s what they have tried to do. City Council budget deliberations will be November 25th through 27th.
The original proposal was for an increase of 3.94 per cent in 2020 and 4.17 per cent in 2021, but it was chiseled down to 3.23 per cent and 3.54 per cent respectively. Hack explains that the City is growing so there are more services to maintain and inflation has to be taken into consideration.
The proposed budget includes an additional almost 58 Full Time Equivalent jobs for the first year and 38.5 in 2021, but when you look at the population, the number of civic jobs per thousand residents has actually declined every year since 2013 when they first started measuring this.
Policing is the largest portion of the City’s operating expenditures at about 21 per cent, or $109.6-million next year and $144-million in 2021. Transportation is next at around 16 per cent. The preliminary budget includes 7 FTEs for the Police Service, including 3 officers, 2 Communications Special Constables, an Executive Director where the cost would be offset by a vacant position, a Clinical Psychologist and a Programmer Analyst for video retrieval of evident to free up the time of officers.
Just over 39 per cent of the total capital project investment for 2020 is an almost $153-million investment for a new central library, which was added to the budget at the request of the Library Board. Administration will report to Council with more information on that project next month and a final decision will be made during budget deliberations. Hack adds that a possible downtown arena complex isn’t in the budget because it hasn’t reached that stage in planning yet.
With inflation and city growth, there are challenges in keeping a lower tax rate, but administration has tried to cut things that wouldn’t have a big impact on service levels. That includes using $10-million of the $14.1-million one-time additional Federal Gas Tax funding to be use for the future organics program for bin purchases, and the City’s Major Transportation Funding Plan, which includes the Bus Rapid Transit project would be phased in over 5 years instead of 4.
