Melfort approves 4.9% budget increase

He explained the tax increase could not be lower because of inflation as well as factors that aren’t in their control, such as built-in increases in labour agreements. He said these increases happen automatically and the City has no control over them whatsoever.

But this increase is lower than the one the City was originally looking at, with all of the original requests put forward by administration included. Melfort was looking at a possible 8.2 per cent tax increase.

“So, at that point, what we did was we agreed to cut some additional requests, just council itself reviewed those additional requests and decided that we had to cut some of them,” Lang said.

Council told administration to go back and look over the existing budget to see if there were additional cuts that could be made without affecting service levels.

For instance, administration went through the City’s contract with the RCMP line by line and found there was room for savings, Lang noted.

The City also ended up scaling back some of the increases within the operating budget. The City’s dust control budget will increase by $17,000, less than the original $50,000 increase that was requested. Melfort will now spend a total $67,000 for dust control.

“We realize that it’s still short, it’s going to be short. We could use more in-budget for dust control, but this will at least allow us to do a job that would be acceptable to the majority, although not ideal.”

The City’s street patching budget also went up by $25,000, half of the original request to add $50,000. Melfort’s total budget for street patching is $72,000.

Overall, administration went through the budget of every department and cut everything they could and still provide the same or similar level of service, at council’s instruction.

“To get any further, I guess we would have been compromising service to our citizens,” he said.

Provincial implications on Melfort’s budget

Melfort won’t be among the Saskatchewan municipalities where the mayor and council’s wages will be frozen.

Cities such as Prince Albert and Saskatoon use a formula that ties the salaries of their elected officials to the salaries of government ministers. In Prince Albert, the mayor receives 50 per cent of a cabinet minister’s salary. Council’s salary is 33 per cent of what the mayor earns.

Lang said this hasn’t affected Melfort at all. He said the City actually has wage increases “entrenched” in its policy. He said these will carry on as planned.

However, if the province decides to freeze its revenue sharing transfer to municipalities at last year’s levels, this would have implications for Melfort’s budget.

To date, the province has not made a decision about how it will proceed with the revenue sharing transfer in the 2015-2016 budget. The transfers take a portion of the PST generated in a year and divides it among the municipalities, which are free to use those funds as they wish.

Melfort is anticipating an estimated $38,000 increase to the amount the province is transferring to it. Two years ago, the province reduced its transfer to the City by $35,000. Lang said this increase would bring the City to where it was two years ago.

If the province doesn’t increase its transfer to Melfort, then the City would have $38,000 less in revenue than it is anticipating, Lang said. But he isn’t sure if that would mean the City would have to revisit its budget.

“If we were compromised from a balancing point of view based on that money, we would have to potentially adjust some of the services that we provide.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames

by Thia James

Melfort approves 4.9% budget increase

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