Council faces tough budget talks
Ex-councillor says pressure is on to retain services as pandemic affects bottom line
Saskatoon residents will soon find out how much their property taxes are going up next year.
City council is scheduled to spend as many as 20 hours over the next two days debating the 2021 budget, which was approved in principle last year only to have massive holes blown in it by the COVID-19 pandemic and the snowstorm earlier this month.
The city's chief financial officer, Kerry Tarasoff, is proposing to use $2.7 million in spending cuts and $19.1 million in unrestricted federal pandemic funding to balance the books while preserving the 3.87 per cent tax increase agreed to last November.
Ann Iwanchuk, who was on council for the initial 2020 and 2021 budget deliberations, said the unprecedented circumstances will only amplify the pressure to maintain city services while keeping the tax increase as low as possible.
In an interview on Tuesday, the former Ward 3 councillor said that she is expecting her former colleagues will likely “stay the course,” with perhaps some small decreases to what is currently the third-lowest tax increase over the last decade.
The financial stress of the pandemic may create a desire to reduce the planned increase, but doing so would affect services and potentially lead to bigger problems after people are vaccinated against COVID-19, she said.
“If you derail it now, then you're playing catch-up into the future, and that's a lot harder for people to swallow, to have larger increases than what would be necessary. That's why I think slow and steady … is probably the way that they will go,” she said.
The financial pressure facing the city is likely to make a significant cut to the property tax increase difficult.
The $14.3-million snow and ice management budget could also present a complication at budget talks. The Nov. 8 storm added an estimated $10 million to that total, pouring more red ink onto books already filled with pandemic-related losses.
City hall has not recommended increasing the 2021 snow budget, on the grounds that predicting snowfall is difficult and that additional federal funding for municipalities could be on the table next year.
Iwanchuk, who campaigned hard to allocate more cash to snow removal while on council, said she believes the response to the storm earlier this month is likely to raise residents' expectations for winters to come.
“It's your priorities — what do you prioritize?” she said.
The city's 2021 budget — which is made up of $551.7 million in operational spending plus $294.8 million in capital — is unusual in that it is the second half of the city's first two-year budget cycle, which was introduced last year.
Council approved the 2021 budget last fall, but provincial legislation requires municipalities to approve a budget each year, meaning it had to be discussed again this month. Those talks are certain to be complicated by outside factors.
The big-ticket items approved last fall included a $67.5-million loan for the Saskatoon Public Library board to build a new downtown branch and $10 million to buy carts for a curbside organics collection program scheduled to roll out in 2023.
Budget deliberations are set to begin at 1 p.m. on Wednesday and continue on Thursday. Council took 21.5 hours over three days to approve the 2020 and 2021 budgets last year. The 2018 budget took 16 hours.