Time for kudos, not city catcalls

As taxpayers, we tend to complain about the amount of tax we pay, especially our property taxes, which seem to be climbing higher and higher every year.

While it’s easy to gripe and grumble about the taxes we pay, there’s an old saying that you get what you pay for.

When Mayor Michael Fougere spoke to the Regina & District Chamber of Commerce this week, he talked about the challenges that faced the council and administration over the past two years. And while not everyone in the audience was happy about seeing a 3.9 per cent increase on their municipal property tax bill, most would agree council and city administration have handled those challenges reasonably well.

What challenges, you ask? Well, let’s look at some of the bigger ones.

First of all, the $278-million stadium project. While nobody likes to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for anything, virtually all of the CFL’s teams are getting new or refurbished stadiums. So the Saskatchewan Roughriders would have been out in the cold — and maybe out of the league — had we decided not to proceed with a new stadium.

But what kind of stadium? Our previous mayor was convinced we needed a four-season, multi-purpose facility with a retractable roof located downtown at a cost of about $460 million. Based on the most optimistic scenarios, we would have been barely able to cover the operating costs, let alone the capital costs, of a stadium project of that magnitude.

Had it been built, it would have undoubtedly become an expensive white elephant we would be paying for, like Montreal’s Big Owe (Olympic Stadium), for decades and decades to come. Fortunately, we opted for a fixedprice, open-air stadium, which will be at least 40 per cent cheaper to build and much cheaper to operate. And unlike the previous stadium proposal, we also have a plan to pay for it, consisting of the city contributing $73 million, the province $80 million, the Riders $25 million and fans $100 million through facility fees.

Fougere was the only mayoral candidate to campaign on the stadium plan approved unanimously by council and given the reelection of every council member who voted in favour of the stadium plan, the voters evidently agreed. Today that project is on time and on budget for completion in 2017.

Another challenge for the mayor and council was the waste water treatment plant project, which became the target of CUPE’s anti-privatization campaign in 2013.

While successfully challenging the CUPE-organized petition on technical grounds, council bravely decided to go ahead with a referendum — the first in 20 years — on a design-bid-build (DBB) waste-water treatment plant. When nearly 60 per cent of the voters rejected the DBB project, the city moved ahead with proposed $224-million P3 plant.

But, as Fougere pointed out, the award-winning P3 project came in $42 million less than projected and $140 million less than a comparable DBB project. “Over the course of 30 years, we’ll save $240 million — almost the price of a stadium,’’ Fougere noted.

Another “curveball’’ thrown at council was the pension plan problem, which quickly became the pension plan crisis when the provincial superintendent of pensions rejected the proposed solution between the City of Regina, five employer groups and 21 employee groups. “Nobody wants a $224-million liability that has to be paid immediately. That would be a huge blow to taxpayers,’’ not to mention pension plan members, Fougere said.

However, a solution has been reached that meets the needs of employees, employers, taxpayers and, from all accounts, the superintendent of pensions.

Since first being elected in 1997, Fougere said he has never seen “so many massive issues come together and converge over the last two years. This is a remarkable testament to the skill of our administration and ... council to stay on target ... and move these forward.’’

Could council and administration have done a better job? Well, our utility rates, already among the highest in the country, are going up another eight per cent in 2015, so there’s always room for improvement.

But, if council and the administration hadn’t handled those challenges as well as they did, we could be facing much higher tax increases than we are today.