By François Biber

Saskatoon city hall tries to lessen tax hike

Nov 29, 2014 | 7:44 AM

Public and city councillor feedback concerning the City of Saskatoon’s proposed 7.3 per cent tax bump forced the city to review its numbers shrinking the proposed increase down to 5.49 per cent.

In a release late Friday, the city’s chief financial officer Kerry Tarasoff said the city identified a number of operational changes and funding opportunities totaling almost $3 million to lessen the blow for taxpayers in 2015.

“This includes a phase-in change to the road and sound wall levy, however it does not change the total investment originally proposed each year for roads or actual timing of the work,” Tarasoff said.

Rather than going with a 2.92 per cent road levy in 2015 and 2016 the city will shrink the dedicated road levy to 1.94 per cent and phase it in over 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Tarasoff said the city plans to backfill the $1.75 million shortfall in 2015 with one-time funding from the land development branch to keep the service level of road maintenance consistent with 2014.

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A proposal to move to biweekly garbage collection is another cost-cutting measure which would see the city saving $70,000 per month. Tarasoff said because recycling has become a norm in Saskatoon, they city can start to move away from weekly black-bin collection.

The city plans to shave off $50,000 from a couple of budget items including funding for the Meewasin Valley Authority (MVA) for its trail system. Instead of $250,000 the MVA will get $200,000. The city was also looking to put $100,000 into a civic facility maintenance reserve to cover repairs and improvements to parking lots. Tarasoff said they can scale that back to $50,000.

In terms of civic operations, the city has built in a two per cent reduction in 2015 and Tarasoff doesn’t see much wiggle room in light of the reduction.

The police budget was not discussed in the report because the budget is approved by the Board of Police Commissioners. If council wants to lower the 2.46 per cent of the budget increase dedicated to policing, it’s something they’ll address during budget deliberations beginning on Tuesday when city council will review the proposed budget and debate what should stay and what should go.

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