Saskatoon committee discusses next steps in addressing 2024/2025 funding gap

There have been four special meetings of city council in Saskatoon this summer to discuss ways to cut the city’s 2024/2025 funding gap.

Those discussions continued on Wednesday, but instead of cutting the gap, a city committee decided how they want to move forward.

Ward 2 councillor Hilary Gough kicked off the report with a motion to cancel all special budget meetings in the coming months, moving the remaining budget items to November.

Gough’s motion passed at Wednesday’s GPC meeting by a unanimous vote.

This means the remaining business line and infromation reports will be deferred to budget deliberations and any other requests from members of council will go through the regular notice of motion process.

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With budget deliberations due to start in November, the city has already made some significant progress, cutting the 2024 gap by nearly $29 million and the 2025 gap by $2.85 million.

1:45 City of Saskatoon defers $20 million from funding gap at Tuesday meeting

If left untouched, these cuts would mean a property tax increase of 7.47 per cent in 2024 and 5.93 per cent in 2025.

There are no more special meetings of council before budget deliberations, but these numbers are not final, and will change.

Council has also asked the Saskatoon Board of Police Commissioners and Saskatoon Library Board to bring forward their budget drafts early this year and council is still waiting for those submissions.

Budget deliberations will commence in November.