The City of Saskatoon is putting together its first multi-year budget for 2020-21 and expects property taxes to increase about four per cent each year.
The city’s budget projects a 2.94 per cent increase in 2020 and 3.17 per cent in 2021 in order to maintain current service levels. But paying for the new city-wide organics program would add another one per cent, making the total increase 3.94 per cent, and 4.17 per cent respectively.
Saskatoon’s chief financial officer said the reason for the regular increases is due to a lack of non-tax revenue streams.
“We’re not being able to keep up and we’ve got to fill that gap with property tax. So we look at expenses very hard. We try to maintain within a mandate of inflation and some growth parameters,” Kerry Tarasoff said.
He added that a multi-year budget could be beneficial for administration, council and residents because it will allow them to plan for future projects or tax increases.
Three options will be presented to the city’s governance and priorities committee next week.
The options range on whether the committee wants to set the target property tax increase at 8.11 per cent (in total) over the next two years.
The other options are whether the committee will commit to a higher or lower tax than what is recommended by the city.
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