City considers rec pass increases
If proposal approved, cost of monthly cards would go up by $5 in the new year
Three years after Saskatoon city hall slashed the price of monthly recreation passes to attract more people, a $5 increase is being proposed.
The City of Saskatoon’s preliminary 2019 budget includes few fee increases other than a rise in the cost of getting some exercise at one of the city’s facilities.
The city reduced the cost of its one-month Leisure Cards, which cover admission to a range of city facilities, like pools and the Saskatoon Field House, to $45 from $75 for a single adult in 2015.
The move was intended to address lagging attendance and revenue, which was successful, according to the city’s director of recreation and community development, Lynne Lacroix.
“Our rollback on prices has indeed, since that time, had us at about 100,000 to 110,000 new visits to our leisure centres on an annual basis,” Lacroix told reporters Wednesday. “So it has indeed achieved what we set out to do with the new prices.”
Rising salary and utility costs are driving the proposed increase to $50 from $45 for 2019, but Lacroix said the “moderate” increase is intended to be small enough not to deter people from joining.
With the proposed 11.1-per-cent increase, monthly youth passes would increase to $30 from $27 and family passes would jump to $100 from $90.
When it comes to the city’s water/waste-water rates, there’s good news and bad news. Water rates will go up by 9.25 per cent in 2019, but it’s the last of four straight years of increases above nine per cent.
The increases began in 2016 and were intended to pay for upgrading the city’s water infrastructure with the specific goal of replacing all lead pipes in the city by 2026.
A 2017 city report showed Saskatoon had lower water rates than Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg, despite the increases up to that point.
Saskatoon Light & Power rates will not increase in 2019, but that has created a revenue issue for the city. The city had budgeted for a three-per-cent increase, but opted to keep its rates the same in 2019 because Saskpower will not hike its rates in 2019-2020.
Saskatoon residents are served by both Saskpower and the city’s power utility, so Saskatoon Light & Power keeps its rates the same as Saskpower.
No increase to power rates means $182,200 less than budgeted for the city’s operating budget, which features a proposed 4.5-per-cent property tax increase. A contingency fund to cover such shortfalls is included in the city’s budget.
The city also transfers money from its utilities to help pay for the operating budget, calling it a return on investment.
That amount goes up by about $1.6 million in 2019 to $34.1 million.