A Melfort councillor is saying the city’s proposed 4.6 per cent increase in civic taxes in its first draft of the operational budget is too much and should be closer to inflation.
Coun. Trent Mitchell said at the Dec. 20 special meeting he’d like the city to aim for a 3.4 per cent increase, which would cover two per cent inflation plus some extra infrastructure funding.
“That’s a number I think I can live with,” he said. “Anything more than that will have to be proven to me that those additional dollars are required.”
To pay for the status quo, the city will need an extra $240,066 to meet inflation. The city’s staff is requesting $25,500 on top of that for repairs to the fire hall, more fire equipment and more replacement fire hydrants. The city’s budget for 2017 was $9.3 million.
Rick Lang, Melfort’s mayor, said city staff will re-examine the budget to try to meet that target.
“We’re going to take another look at it, see if there’s more efficiencies we can identify and potentially get that down lower than four per cent,” he said. “I don’t know if that will be possible, that will be a discussion for the next budget meeting.”
The mayor noted there were approximately $256,000 cut from the budget last year due to provincial funding cuts.
“We made some adjustments that were temporary,” he said. “We’ve had to look at re-funding those this year and so we’re trying to address the idea that we have to re-fund some of those things that were cut.”
On top of that, the city will lose a further $76,000 due to the end of a grant that was paid in lieu of property taxes for provincially-owned SaskPower facilities and $75,000 due to changes in the PST revenue-sharing formula.
“We’re still addressing $150,000 in further cuts this year and still trying to provide all of the services as they’ve been provided – and still trying to find efficiencies in the budget,” Lang said, adding that’s the challenge at further meetings.
To save money, the city will review advertising, merchant fees and charges, facility fees, and the $30,000 per year given to the Chamber of Commerce for tourism promotion services. It also plans to save energy costs by installing LED lights.
The mayor said the city isn’t making plans at this point for any surprise cuts from the provincial government.
“The obvious hope is that they’re done cutting.”
Council will have multiple meetings to discuss and approve the operational budget.
