The City of Regina is holding an emergency budget discussion in place of the regular council agenda Monday night in order to analyze the impacts the provincial budget will have on the city.
The provincial budget revealed the cancellation of grants-in-lieu payments to municipalities, resulting in an $11 million loss of revenue for the city as of April 1.
READ MORE: Provincial budget sees cuts to Regina libraries, U of R funding
Grants-in-lieu are payments made by provincial Crown corporations like SaskEnergy and SaskPower in lieu of property tax. Mayor Michael Fougere said the shortfall is equivalent to the city’s entire snow removal budget.
“We have to deal with it urgently because we’ve already passed our budget. We had a 3.99 per cent mill rate increase and now we need to open up that budget again to find that $11 million so that’s a concern,” Fougere said ahead of the meeting.
The mayor added that as far as he was aware, this is the first time the city has had to revisit a budget after it had already passed.
Over the weekend, the City of Saskatoon also held an emergency meeting to discuss budget shortfalls in what Mayor Charlie Clarke referred to as an “immediate fiscal crisis for the city.”
READ MORE: Saskatoon mulls legal action over cuts in Saskatchewan budget
Saskatoon city council decided to pursue legal action via an injunction over the grant payment cut.
When asked if the City of Regina was considering something similar, Fougere said he believed there was a better approach.
“I’m always more inclined to talk than to litigate… that to me is not even on the table,” Fougere said.
“We always need to talk and have that open dialogue and conversation. The message tonight from council is that we want to talk about how we can be rid of this problem.”
Mayor Fougere said dipping into the city’s reserve funds was an option in dealing with the loss in revenue, but added that those reserves were earmarked for specific expenses like natural disasters.
“When we’re told ‘as of April 1 you lose $11 million’, that is a problem. For us to just roll over and say we’ll just use our reserves is not sustainable… This is downloading a problem onto us and I think we just can’t do that,” Fougere said.
The emergency meeting will be held at City Hall at 5:30 p.m. The regular council agenda will be held at the same time on Tuesday.
Comments