The City of Saskatoon is set to lower its 2018 property tax hike by almost a full percentage point after the Saskatchewan government reinstated SaskEnergy’s grant-in-lieu (GIL) of taxes in the 2018 provincial budget.
The loss of the SaskEnergy GIL, which was paid to the city for property and rights-of-way instead of property taxes, impacted the city’s 2017 and 2018 budget by $5.72 million.
Kerry Tarasoff, the city’s chief financial officer, said reinstatement of the GIL will allow the city to reduce the 2018 property tax hike by 0.91 per cent, bringing it down to 3.79 per cent.
The increase means a single-family home with an assessed value of $371,000 will pay an additional $5.50 a month or $66 for the year.
At the 4.7 per cent rate decided last November, the single-family home would pay an additional $81.84 in property taxes.
Tarasoff said he couldn’t recall or find records of the city reopening a budget to lower property taxes.
“We’ve asked the tax payers to open up their wallets to help our situation over the past couple years and with this money coming back, we felt it was probably fair to return some of that,” said Tarasoff.
The new rate will be presented at the governance and priorities committee meeting on April 23, before going to city council.
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