Watch above: Saskatoon city councillors debate services and projects for a second day of budget deliberations. A day after denying the police service new money, Wendy Winiewski finds out how the transit department fares.
SASKATOON – It will be another week before the 2015 Saskatoon budget is finalized. Deliberations were supposed to end Wednesday, but councillors had too many concerns with the budget brought forward by city administration.
As it sits now, the property tax increase for next year is 6.23 per cent but Mayor Don Atchison says it could end up being lower.
“If you look at the other options that are still on the table, I think we could be under 6.0 per cent,” said Atchison.
Councillors agreed to spread out an increase for road funding maintenance to three years instead of two, shaving almost a full percentage point off the original proposed increase of 7.32 per cent.
That decrease was slightly offset by adding in a $313,000 subsiding for Saskatoon Transit to keep fares from increasing 10 cents, a move supported by Atchison.
Read more: City council rejects police budget, scales back weekly garbage pickup
“For some people, that’s a significant impact on their lives,” said Atchison. “They can’t afford to buy passes, they don’t have very much money and for them to be able to get on the bus, I think it’s important.”
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Coun. Mairin Loewen said it was hard to justify a fare increase after what riders have gone through in the past year.
The cost of going to a leisure centre will go up 50 cents next year, water and waste water rates are set to rise 9.5 per cent and electricity will go up 2.3 per cent.
Read more: Budget adjustments could result in lower 2015 property tax increase
Efforts by Coun. Randy Donauer to scale back staff increases and to curb spending overall failed. On Tuesday, Donauer attempted to reduce the number of new full-time positions by 10 but did have some success on Wednesday when councillors agreed not to increase the communications staff by one.
The budget discussion will continue on Dec. 9.
With files from David Giles
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