The new year sits on the horizon, only a few weeks away, and yet there has been no first look at the 2018 budget for the City of Yorkton.
It was only a few short years ago the Council of the day prided itself in getting the budget numbers crunched before the calendar changed. At the time they touted the effort as a wise way to do business, primarily because it allowed the City to go out and begin the tendering process on its planned projects early, suggesting that was how to best draw attention from multiple bidders and thus get the best deal.
It was sound enough reasoning, and for a time it worked.
So why are we not seeing even a first blush at next year’s budget yet?
There are likely a couple of factors at play, although ultimately they are related.
The upcoming budget will not be an easy one.
There is clearly no appetite, either from taxpayers, or Council to see another major hike in property taxes as was the case with the 2017 budget. Double digit increases are not particularly palatable for anyone, nor are they reasonably financially sustainable for ratepayers.
Pencils are going to need to be sharp moving through the 2018 budget process.
But the reality is Council has no clear idea just how sharp those pencils may need to be.
This year with the budget all but passed the province release its budget and blindsided just about everyone with funding cuts.
In their last budget, the provincial government chopped grants-in-lieu which had gone to municipalities from SaskPower and SaskEnergy. On top of other revenue sharing losses, some communities were facing 40-plus per cent losses in funding from the government, or millions of dollars’ worth.
The government then backed off reducing grants-in-lieu to municipalities so that some communities wouldn’t be hit as hard hit by the budget decision, Yorkton among those.
The provincial decisions sent Yorkton Council back to the books to crunch their 2017 budget, and ending up raising taxes higher than initially planned.
But what happens in 2018?
Will the province keep the reduction capped? Or, will the last-minute reduction they offered municipalities go by the wayside, reducing what the City has to work with?
And therein lies the roadblock to an early budget. The province has struggled to get its books back to anything close to balanced and that means it’s unclear what they may do in terms of funding levels to municipalities.
Without those numbers being known, a City budget would be largely based on hopes. It might be that funding levels are held comparable to this year, but given the last provincial budget making cuts no one saw coming, it is largely a guess.
That leaves Council crossing its fingers, and playing a waiting game.
