More to city than pristine roads

The toughest task for a new councillor generally is to learn how big a bite the annual budget is, and how little chance there is to chew it all before having to swallow.

This year’s $812-million helping clearly was a difficult one to gulp down — particularly for councillors who just two months ago were knocking on doors and being regaled with stories about poor streets and inadequate snow removal.

So intense has been the lobbying for better roads that even veteran councillors have been simultaneously pressing for more money for pavement and warning of tax increases.

To his credit, Mayor Don Atchison stepped up early and consistently to remind his colleagues that this council is still young — only two months into its fouryear mandate — and there will be time to get in place those programs councillors campaigned on, instead of rushing to gut the budget and causing irreparable damage.

He also reminded them that there’s more to Saskatoon than its roads — something that even some veteran councillors seemed to have forgotten.

So frustrated were some that midway through Wednesday’s session that Atchison had to remind colleagues how Saskatoon came to be where it is, and that it was their duty to pull together for the good of the entire community. He also asked the administration to find a way for the dedicated fund for road repair to be pushed to 1.25 per cent while keeping the overall tax increase below five per cent.

Rapid growth has caused Saskatoon’s budget to bulge — as has been the case in Calgary, with its 5.5 per cent increase and Edmonton (5.7 per cent) — and the city must now build capacity to serve that growth.

City manager Murray Totland came back with a suggestion to shave a little here, add some revenue there and cut $750,000 from the overall budget, making the tax increase 4.99 per cent. This means more will be assumed in tax growth from the city’s expansion, people will be fined more readily — particularly if they park on a street designated for snow removal — and senior government buildings will be expected to pay $300,000 more in grants in lieu of taxes.

These changes don’t come without immediate and long-term risks, particularly because money for the operating budget has to be there year after year or future taxpayers face a big hit. For example, included in Totland’s estimate is speculation that the city can buy its fuel for less or dip into its reserve to make up the difference. If he’s wrong, not only will the higher cost have to be covered next year, but the reserve will have suffered.

That this was to pay for more pavement is even more distressing. Over the past 20 years, since the city had in place a preventive maintenance program that allowed it to maintain its streets at a level that helped avoid cataclysmic decline, the price of oil has risen to between $80 and $145 a barrel from less than $20.

Getting that extra money from property tax hurts, particularly for those of us who haven’t seen our wages rise at the same rate. However, it’s a mug’s game to hope to pay these ongoing and growing costs by stealing out of capital expenses, appropriating one-time funds with no assurance that money will be there next year, budgeting on year-end surpluses, using money from police or fire budgets, cutting services to cyclists, or forcing minor cuts on every civic program each year.

The roads will never get cheaper to maintain and always demand more sacrifices. Without a sufficient dedicated fee that grows at the rate the costs for roads grows, pavement will eventually consume everything that places Saskatoon among Canada’s best cities.

And once those are gone, the pavement may be pristine but the rest will never come back.

Atchison’s leadership and the courage of some councillors to defend other civic programs, even though the streets in their wards are also in bad shape, helped protect citizens from the worst of the pavement hysteria this year.

Civic administrators will begin working on the 2014 budget in less than a month. Over the course of the next 11 months they will be forced to hone and tone down that document until there’s little wriggle room when councillors meet to tackle the budget next December.

But before this document is drafted, citizens had better be willing to remind their councillors and the administration that there is more to Saskatoon than tar and gravel.

Last year, the city adopted a vision statement and strategic plan. It would be a shame to throw that out so early just to fill in potholes.