City council will be deliberating the upcoming budget sometime early in the new year, and the implications of that document will be great.
We’ve seen a lot of change in just a few years. There are few places as prosperous as the Energy City. When people are talking about Estevan, they are talking about boom times. Estevan isn’t without its problems by any stretch, but we often hear that Estevan is dealing with good problems to have: growth first among them. While we agree that it is better than the alternative, we must also agree that growth’s issues – how it’s accepted, how it’s managed and how it’s encouraged – are enormous ones.
While growth is a subtle issue that requires a deft and varied touch, the other issue we hear a great deal of from City Hall is that of debt.
These are different issues that require a very different strategy, though they are linked. Mayor Roy Ludwig has talked about the City’s infrastructure deficit. As Estevan grew, not just in numbers and business, but even in traffic making its way through the city along Highway 39, the infrastructure just didn’t keep up.
The priority has been to add roads, sewer and water lines, and the updating and upgrading of existing infrastructure fell in priority, though that work is now catching up a little.
Meanwhile during those boom times, the City collected a debt that reached nearly $40 million, something it has now committed to paying down as quickly as it can.
What we’ve seen as a result is a pair of years with lofty tax increases, which was also a result of static taxes in Estevan in the past that failed to keep up with inflation and other increases in service delivery costs.
This all means there is a lot riding on the next City budget. Whatever is in it will not fix all that ails the City, nor will it incur irreparable harm.
The administration and council are setting up for a course that they have been stepping toward for two years.
The property tax increases of the last two years, including last year’s increase of about 20 per cent, were designed to get the City in a position to be able to continue to progress, and the tax jumps were an aberration. There won’t be increases required like that every year, though we understand why those budgets played out the way they did.
The past two years, we think, have been the set up, and the kind of budget assembled in January is what we expect will be a more accurate example of the kind of financial balancing we will see for a number of years to come, or at least until the debt reaches a more manageable point. That’s still five or more years away.
We expect some tax increase, nothing quite as substantial as in 2013 or 2014, but one that will keep the City’s operations sustainable.
We also expect council will be selective when it comes to the projects they choose to tackle in the next fiscal year. There is work to be done in a city in desperate need of upgrades, but we need clear direction. There are many solutions to these good problems that we have, but consistency in plan and priority will be vital. Consistency is what we expect to see in 2015.
