The Battlefords Chamber of Commerce went to City Council Monday to make their views known on the revisions to the city budget.
Instead, Chamber president Warren Williams got an earful in return from councillors about the province’s decision to take away payments in lieu to the city.
Williams, along with other Chamber representatives including executive director Linda Machniak and past president Jay Bottomley, was making the case for the Chamber's position following the approval of budget revisions at the last council meeting. Those revisions included a further three per cent tax increase on top of the other increases approved in December and January.
The Chamber president had sent a letter, dated May 5, to Mayor Ryan Bater and members of council expressing concern about the tax burden.
“The Chamber of Commerce agrees the provision of necessary services is one key factor for a community to flourish and taxes must be levied to support these services,” the letter stated. “However, we do not agree with an increase in taxation as a practice to shift and download the burden of taxation to local residents and businesses to solve the current financial challenge.”
On Monday, Williams acknowledged this is a familiar message the Chamber has delivered.
“We sound like a broken record here. We come up here and we’re always saying ‘no new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes,’” said Williams.
“That’s not our message today.”
His message, he said, was to “try to find a way to hold the line on additional taxes.”
Williams used the analogy of a business having to deal with rising costs.
“It’s difficult to just keep raising the prices and stay competitive in the market. And in the market we’re talking about here is the economic market of encouraging people to move to the Battlefords, and encouraging businesses to move to the Battlefords.”
Williams expressed concern North Battleford was “pricing ourselves out of the economic market” by doing that.
But members of council made it known they believed a different level of government deserved to be on the receiving end of the Chamber’s complaints.
Councillor Greg Lightfoot asked Williams if the Battlefords Chamber had sent a letter to the province about the provincial tax increases.
Williams admitted they had not. “Our primary area of advocacy is the local government,” he said.
Williams went on to mention that of cities around the province, the local tax increase was among the highest.
“We think the numbers that we’re showing here put the city of North Battleford near the top of the list. I’m not sure that’s where we want to be.”
That prompted an immediate response from Councillor Len Taylor.
“There’s another list we’re near the top of,” said Taylor. “That’s of ‘cities affected by the government’s stealing money from our SaskPower and SaskEnergy funds.’ We had a contract with the Crown corporations, and that contract was broken unilaterally and our right to sue was taken away from us.”
As for the budget impact, Taylor said only four or five other municipalities, out of 109 communities, are affected more than North Battleford. “Most of them have not been affected as bad as the city of North Battleford has.”
“And we need your help, the provincial Chamber’s help, to recognize that the province took money away from us that had been previously budgeted, worked on by our professional staff, and hours spent around this table with the Chamber and others, trying to find ways to balance our approach to the community.”
In his remarks, Mayor Bater posed a question to Williams asking “what would a business do” if a business had a contract and the second business unilaterally decided to ignore it.
“You’d probably seek to see those contracts fulfilled,” Bater offered. “As Councillor Taylor pointed out, we don’t have that option. Because we’re not a business, we’re a civic government. And our legal rights have been taken from us.”
