Saskatoon councillors ask for report into spending cuts, user fee increases before 2022 budget talks

While budget talks for 2022 have not yet started, Saskatoon councillors are already looking at ways to help the city recover from the pandemic and make up for the $19 million deficit the city incurred due to COVID-19 costs this year.

At a special finance committee meeting on Friday, councillors voted in favour of administration looking into cost cutting measures for the city's operating budget next year.

Coun. Randy Donauer moved that administration to write a report looking at the effects of decreasing spending in all city departments in the 2022 budget by 0.5 per cent. The motion was approved by council.

Donauer also moved a motion for a report to look into reducing transfers to city reserves in next year's budget by 0.5 per cent, as well as increasing user fees by 5 per cent.

A unique budget

"[The motions] are quite different than anything that we've done in a budget before," said Donauer. "But this is a little bit of a different year because the impact of COVID in our community is very significant."

For several years, Saskatoon has used a multi-year budget process as a way to better plan for the future.

If every city department cut its budget by 0.5 per cent in 2022, it would save the city $2.8 million.

The total operating budget for the City of Saskatoon in 2021 was $540 million.

Coun. Donauer said he knew that every department would not necessarily be asked to cut their budgets, but that it was important to start somewhere.

"I might get shellacked at council for even asking this, but I think these are questions we need to ask," he said. "To me, they're not trivial, even if council doesn't end up going for them."

Property tax

This year, the council is also concerned about the proposed indicative property tax increase. It's currently set at 5.96 per cent for 2022 and 5.42 per cent for 2023. 

In June, the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce said that the proposed property tax increase for 2022 would stall the city's economic recovery from COVID-19. The chamber said a large tax increase would weaken businesses' ability to reopen and rehire workers.

Councillors on the committee also voted in favour of administration writing a report taking a closer look at cost-cutting measures in place from the City of Edmonton and the City of Calgary.

The City of Calgary has set a target to reduce operating budgets by $24 million in 2021 and $50 million in 2022.

In Edmonton, council voted to implement budget reduction strategies of $49.9 million across city departments for 2021, and another $9.4 million in 2022

Saskatoon's chief financial officer Kerry Tarasoff said that administration would only be able to prepare the lengthy report in time for budget deliberations.

City council will debate the 2022/23 budget from Nov. 29-Dec. 1.