If there ever was a good time to inflict a more modest property tax increase on the population of the Energy City, 2016 would be it.
We could be asking or even demanding no tax or civic fee increases, but we have seen that movie before and didn’t like the ending.
Reality speaks to the need for a tax hike in 2016, we just trust our city council to ensure it’s a modest one, not necessarily a big “we gotta catch-up” version. That will happen soon enough, once southern Saskatchewan’s economy turns around to the positive side again.
But for now, we know there are significant bills to be paid and they can’t be paid with the current civic cash flow.
There are a few new subdivisions that come with up-front costs. Understandably there will be some cost recoveries, but those take time. Those new subdivisions have to be serviced right now and that costs money.
Our water and sewage systems require continual upgrades to serve growing populations and industrial users.
Street building, repairing and cleaning requires big bucks these days and there are more of them. Then there is the expansion of policing and fire rescue services.
This coming year is one for negotiations with our unionized employees. We don’t expect them to be seeking lower wages in these tougher economic times.
The city governors have to find a new city manager and a new fire rescue chief within the next few months while paying severance packages to the outgoing personnel. These are not people on the lower end of the civic payroll, either coming or going.
Getting Estevan into ever better condition to play host to the 2016 Saskatchewan Summer Games will come with additional costs, just as it did last spring and summer. Our residents can expect some additional costs will be borne just by being the host city for those Games. There are always unexpected expenses associated with anything of this magnitude. We welcome the Games, we probably won’t be welcoming the ensuing invoices for additional items that inevitably crop up and weren’t planned for and won’t be covered by traditional provincial money sources or sponsors.
We probably can’t expect any major largesse from the provincial government’s revenue sharing program either. We understand things are tight, economically speaking, all over the province. We are not the exception.
We know there will be some corners that can be cut in the spirit of savings. Our civic department heads are well aware that this will be a year of austerity, not a year to trot out the wish lists. Broken equipment will have to be repaired, not replaced. A tree here and there may not get planted or trimmed, some paint may not be applied on surfaces that need to be painted, even if we are Summer Games hosts.
Still, there is a degree of confidence in most sectors. The City still has a few veteran employees who have learned how to play the tightrope game when it comes to belt tightening. And it is going to be a tightrope year for sure. We don’t want to come away from the Summer Games looking like cheapskates, but we don’t need to punish ourselves by being spendthrifts either.
We might say, this is where civic leadership surfaces to show the way through the temporary economic maze without hurting our city’s
rent paying, property-tax paying citizenry. After all, tightrope walking is also a huge balancing act. Both can be done if and when expertise is applied.
