Saskatoon city councillors spent Monday’s governance and priorities committee meeting mulling over ideas to reduce the 5.77 per cent increase to next year’s property taxes.
“We’re getting down to the crunch on budget, we’ve been wrestling with what was earlier an indicative budget rate of 7 per cent, and how to bring a budget down that the citizens can live with and where can we find the best opportunities for savings,” Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark said.
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Over 600 ideas were submitted as part of the city’s internal 30-day challenge to city staff. The ideas were grouped into three categories: ideas to be implemented in 2018; ideas requiring city council’s direction; and ideas that aren’t implementable for 2018 that need further analysis.
Around 130 ideas that could be implemented without council approval would drop the tax impact by 0.18 per cent to 5.59 per cent.
Out of the 61 ideas that needed council approval, nine were deemed viable and discussed during the meeting:
- removal of the dedicated Snow and Ice Levy ($1,212,700 or a reduction of 0.55 per cent);
- reintroduction of an Amusement Tax ($1,000,000 or a reduction of 0.45 per cent);
- implementation of a secondary suite fee ($200,000 or a reduction of 0.09 per cent);
- decreased watering of park/green space (future report pending);
- permanently reduce the annual allocation to RCE ($500,000 or a reduction of 0.23 per cent);
- discontinue printing and mailing the collection calendar ($85,000 or a reduction of 0.04 per cent);
- bi-weekly garbage collection ($350,000 or a reduction of 0.16 per cent);
- billboards on City rights-of-way ($100,000 or a reduction of 0.05 per cent); and
- waste as a utility ($8,900,000 or a reduction of 4.04 per cent).
If all nine ideas are approved, the property tax hike would be slightly below 1 per cent.
City councillors moved to gather more information on each option before making a decision during budget deliberations.
“We’re trying to direct administration’s time well to focus on the things that are the best fit and to find some of those cost savings so we can bring forward a budget that we feel we can live with, under tight and difficult circumstances,” Clark said.
The city’s estimated shortfall in next year’s budget is $12 million.
The committee also reviewed the results of the 2017 online citizen budget, getting a better idea of how residents want their tax dollars used.
“It’s very valuable because it’s a high level, it gives you the understanding of how citizens are evaluating and what are the impacts they’re seeing,” Clark said.
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According to the survey, residents are generally happy with the level of service they’re getting in Saskatoon, and many believe the city is working toward making Saskatoon a better place to live within the next 10 years.
Poor road conditions topped the list of resident concerns with 52 per cent of respondents longing for more city funds to be spent on roads, while 42 per cent of respondents want spending on roads to remain the same.
Affordable housing narrowly followed with 49 per cent wanting more funding while 35 per cent felt spending should be kept at the same level.
“We want to take everything that citizens and staff have taken seriously and report back on what we’re going to be doing to implement,” Clark said. “We likely won’t be able to implement every recommendation, some are more challenging than others.”
This is the third year the city has used the online citizen budget to get an idea of what the public wants with their tax dollars.
City council is expected to debate and set a budget for 2018 later this year.
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