Council delivers frugal budget with 4.7 per cent tax increase

Saskatoon’s 2018 property tax increase is officially set at 4.7 per cent, but city hall administrators and politicians stress the hike is mostly compensating for reduced funding from the province.

After about 13 hours of deliberation over two days, city council settled Tuesday on an increase just below the 4.96 per cent starting point announced a month ago. It means an increase of $81.84 for the owner of an average home with an assessed value of $371,000.

The budget marked a continued effort by the City of Saskatoon to deal with reduced revenue from the provincial government dating back to the March 22 provincial budget.

On its own, the impact of the provincial budget essentially produced a 2.78 per cent property tax increase because the city needed to backfill funding to maintain services, council heard. The increase to the city’s budget otherwise was about 1.92 per cent.

“I knew there wasn’t any silver bullet, big cost savings to be found, and I knew there were going to be some additional pressures we were going to be facing, like those unfunded areas like street sweeping and parks,” Mayor Charlie Clark told reporters.

The increase was lower than the average property tax increase of 5.3 per cent over the last five years and lower than the 2017 increase of 4.82 per cent. The 2017 city budget needed to be adjusted in April in the wake of the provincial budget.

Clark told council he continues to talk with provincial ministers about a solution to grants-in-lieu of property taxes from Crown corporations, some of which were eliminated in the last provincial budget. Those cuts produced revenue holes for urban municipalities throughout the province.

Coun. Zach Jeffries said the city needs to be compensated for services it provides for Crowns, even in tough budgetary times.

“We’re all in this together and we all have to pay our fair share,” Jeffries said.

Coun. Randy Donauer said he was willing to live with the property tax increase, given the revenue issues the city faced. Residents made clear to him they wanted services maintained, he said.

“I don’t like increasing taxes, but the reality of it is there are some things that residents want to see improved on,” Donauer said in an interview. “They didn’t want us to stop watering the parks.”

On Monday, city council lowered the property tax increase to 4.41 per cent when it voted to abandon a plan for more snow and ice management in 2018. Removing the extra snow and ice funding accounted for the largest single cut in the 2018 budget, worth $1.2 million.

On Tuesday, council voted to increase funding for the Meewasin Valley Authority for 2018, although only slightly more than half of that $331,000 was added to property taxes.

Council also voted Tuesday to spend $240,000 more on parks maintenance, which is estimated to be underfunded annually by $400,000.

Council also added an additional fire inspector for $125,000 and decided to spend $32,000 more on a program to help seniors with fire safety and fall prevention.

Fire Chief Morgan Hackl confirmed there are discussions about moving some of the responsibilities for the city’s property maintenance bylaw from the fire department to bylaw enforcement officers.

The 2018 budget featured few bold initiatives, other than the budget for the first full year of operation for the Remai Modern art gallery. The gallery’s 2018 budget was approved on Monday.

Overall, the city budget was marked by frugality, with a zero per cent property tax increase request from the public library and no new patrol officers sought by police for the first time since 2010.

The largest spending amount added was $450,000 for street sweeping, which only made up for a lack of money to maintain service.

Coun. Troy Davies thanked outgoing city manager Murray Totland for his work on his last budget before departing at the end of the year.

“As crazy as this sounds, I actually enjoy budget each and every year,” Totland said.