The City of Saskatoon finished 2017 in the red.
Officials said a variety of factors were behind the $3.1 million deficit last year, but the biggest factor was a decline in revenue.
Clae Hack, the city’s director of finance, said revenue was $5.6 million lower than expected from transit, waste handling, and parking fines.
“The City is facing significant non-tax revenue challenges as user fees and other forms or revenue have remained flat or decreased year over year,” Hack said in a statement.
“We’ve put strategies in place to assist in addressing these revenue challenges in a timely manner including looking into waste as a utility, phasing in decreases to revenue budgets to align with actuals, and future reallocation of parking meter revenue to offset the decrease in parking violations.”
More money was also spent than originally budgeted on street cleaning and sweeping, park maintenance, and unplanned maintenance to aging infrastructure.
The deficit represents a 0.65 per cent variance in city’s $477.6 million operating budget.
Hack said despite the deficit, there will not be a significant impact to the city’s finances or operations as surpluses from previous years will be used to offset the deficit.
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