Divided council backs 5.34 per cent hike
‘We’re just kicking the can down the road’
After nearly 14 hours of budget talks, Saskatoon city council settled on imposing a 5.34 per cent tax increase for 2015.
The budget passed by a vote of eight to three after nearly four hours on Tuesday, the third day of deliberations. Councillors Randy Donauer, Eric Olauson and Tiffany Paulsen voted against it, despite the drop from the originally proposed increase of 7.32 per cent.
Both Donauer and Olauson spoke out against a perceived lack of real effort to reduce spending after numerous attempts by both to slash the number of new full-time employees sought by various departments, with little success.
“I wasn’t elected to fill the hallways of this building with administrators,” said Olauson, who also criticized deferring some spending for the future.
“We are still going to be facing the same budget pressure next year as we did this year,” he said.
Donauer and Olauson pointed to the police budget, which was initially rejected by council and revised to reduce the number of new officers by four, as an example for the rest of the city.
Mayor Don Atchison defended the increase as delivering the services people want through better roads, which accounts for two per cent of the increase, and greater safety and security through increases to the fire department and police budgets.
“I thought we spent the last some 14 hours looking at budgets and that and trying to deal with it, and everyone had an opportunity to bring forth their ideas and their thoughts on what they’d like to have reduced,” he said.
Out of nowhere, Coun. Pat Lorje proposed cutting the community support officers program, which had been approved until the end of 2015. The attempt failed because the unanimous vote needed to axe the program fell short.
“I don’t think we should even consider going back on the promises we made to (the five officers),” Coun. Darren Hill said.
Although Lorje originally estimated the savings from cutting the program would be close to $650,000, it was revealed that due to the notice required for the officers, that number would be closer to $400,000 and would not affect the mill rate.
“So we’re not cutting the mill rate at all by eliminating the CSO program. Imagine that,” Hill said.
Lorje complained “a lot of hot air is being blown” in the debate over the program, which employs officers in uniform to interact with panhandlers and hand out tickets for bylaw infractions.
“Frankly, whether or not this reduces the mill rate or not is irrelevant to me,” said Paulsen, who spoke in favour of cutting the program.
Council backed the removal of $1 million in spending from the budget, including $400,000 in financing costs related to the new civic operations centre and $600,000 in deferred spending on relocating the city yards — now bumped to 2018 from 2017 — and delayed renovations and expansion of civic office space.
Olauson felt the move was just deferring spending to a later date.
“These are not expenses that are cuts that are going away,” he said. “We’re just kicking the can down the road.”
After the meeting, Paulsen said she voted against the budget because the increase was just too high.
She said funnelling the property tax revenue collected from growth into big capital projects is putting a squeeze on the operational budget and needs to be reconsidered.
“I think we need to revisit that situation,” Paulsen said.
Last year’s property tax increase was 7.43 per cent in Saskatoon.
In Regina, city council approved a 3.9 per cent increase Monday night.