KINDERLSEY — Kindersley council passed the town’s 2025 budget at its May 12 meeting with a $108,390 surplus projected after factoring in $2.64 million in transfers from the town’s cash reserves.
The budget was passed during a brief open session of the meeting that followed a one-hour 56 minute in-camera (closed to the public) session.
For the year, the town is forecasting $16.83 million in revenue and $20.8 million in expenses.
Projected revenue is down seven per cent from the $18.1 million in actual revenue received in 2024, while expenses are expected to rise 39 per cent from the $14.99 million spent last year.
The primary drivers of the additional expenses for this year include an approximate doubling of spending on protective services to $2.71 million and a 60 per cent increase in spending on transportation services to $5.51 million.
Those expenses include $1.22 million on capital expenses for the local fire department and $1.35 million in street paving.
The town’s 2024 budget earmarked $1.59 million for paving, though those projects were later deferred, according to this year’s budget.
Other major capital expenditures in the budget include $1.34 million combined for water and sewer infrastructure, $144,070 for the West Central Events Centre and $132,300 for the local parks department.
“It’s never easy to do the capital budget when you’re playing with taxpayer money,” Councillor Shaun Henry said at the meeting.
“And there was lots of going back and forth, and council made a couple special sessions, and it wasn’t taken something lightly, even though it seems like it because we’re passing it so fast, but there was lots of time and effort put into it.”
Council expects property tax revenue to rise 1.5 per cent to $7.99 million this year, thanks in part to an increase in the local property mill rate from 11.1 mills to 11.25 – an increase of 1.35 per cent.
Mayor Ken Francis concurred with Chief Administrative Officer Audrey Hebert that the mill rate increase was essentially revenue neutral for the town, which saw its tax base shrink in the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency’s 2024 revaluation.
Hebert noted that last year’s review saw Kindersley lose $14 million in taxable assessment.
(SAMA revaluations are based on property values two years prior, so do not always reflect the market in real time.)
“There was some big drops in assessments on hotels, for instance, and multi-family units, so we basically balanced that out to come to a fair compromise in our minds on setting a fair mill rate factor,” Francis said.
Notes:
The West Central Events Centre sold $160,225 worth of liquor in 2024, or almost $439 for every day of the year. The facility also generated $293,441 in ice rentals. Both figures are expected to remain similar in 2025.
The town expects to end the year with $7.47 million in reserves, down 25 per cent from the end of last year and down 34 per cent from the end of 2023.
