Regina city council puts finishing touches on 2021 budget

Regina city council has finished what it started.

Deliberations on the 2021 began Wednesday, but concluded for the night without final approval for certain aspects of the document.

On Thursday, council approved the whole budget and its 2.34 per cent mill rate increase — the lowest hike since 2009.

“This is a responsible budget that holds the line on civic operations while allowing for significant investment in the community,” Mayor Sandra Masters said in a media release.

“These investments are necessary for the continued growth and vitality of our community, and to ensure we have the infrastructure and services in place to support that growth.”

The mill rate increase works out to about $4.13 more per month for the average household. There’s also a utility increase that works out to about $4.33 extra per month for the average household.

The hike in the mill rate includes a 1.39 per cent budget increase for the Regina Police Service, a 0.50 increase for the Recreational Infrastructure Program and a 0.45 per cent increase for Mosaic Stadium.

“In developing the 2021 budget, we challenged ourselves to find even more in savings and efficiencies,” city manager Chris Holden said in the release.

“The city’s commitment to continuous improvement has achieved cost savings of close to $20 million over the last four years, including $5 million achieved in the 2021 budget.”

The general capital plan includes: $34.5 million for the Street Infrastructure Renewal Program, with $18 million for residential road improvements; $15 million for the Winnipeg Street bridge replacement, and another $4.2 million for renewal of other bridge infrastructure in the city; and, $12.4 million for the Facilities Asset Management Program to extend the life of city-owned facilities and reduce future expenses.

The utility capital plan is directing $25.9 million toward water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure renewal, $10.1 million to replacement water meters and automated meter infrastructure, and $6 million to stormwater improvements in the Heritage neighbourhood.

Council also agreed to amend the proposed 2021 budget to move $500,000 from the COVID-19 Recovery Reserve to programs and services supporting harm reduction through the Community Investment Grants Program, and $200,000 from the Community Investment Reserve to sports programming for people with disabilities.

There also was an amendment to not limit filters to one year for the Lead Removal Water Filter Program.

After the meeting, Masters said she is a proponent of multi-year budgeting.

“I think we should be able to track out some of these issues into future years knowing every year you’re going to approve an annual budget. But to me, putting the next three or four years on the table, then everyone can have some comfort. If we’re only ever looking at the year in front of us, I’m not sure that’s the best planning,” Masters said.

Police, public library receive proposed increases

Regina’s police and public libraries will get some more money to work with.

Both the Regina Police Service and the Regina Public Library saw their proposed mill rate increases passed at Thursday’s council meeting.

The police service was asking for a nearly $4-million increase in its budget.

Council heard from delegates who were against the proposed increase in the police budget.

Harley Tolver spoke at the meeting and believed the money should be spent on mental health and addictions counsellors.

Josh Campbell, Sophia Young and Keisha Nginhena spoke in favour of using the money on green initiatives instead.

Police Chief Evan Bray spoke at the council meeting, saying 90 per cent of the police’s budget goes towards paying the wages of RPS members, with the rest going to police vehicles, gas, and other technology.

“We’ve been lagging behind in terms of resources. Our city is a fast-growing city and it’s got complex needs,” Bray said.

The money will go towards hiring 11 positions — eight officers and three civilian positions — among other things.

Bray said one of the reason the service was asking for the increase was to help officers deal with the aspects of the job that take a toll on their mental health.

“We are seeing officers off work as a result of occupational stress injuries or PTSD. We’re also seeing officers at work suffering from PTSD which is equally dangerous. We need to find ways to get them healthy,” Bray said.

He pointed to a survey done with RPS members and many were concerned with the health of their peers.

“Having more officers means that we have more officers to attend to those high-risk calls. We can take our time on calls, we can provide a better job, we have more time for officers to do proactive work and that has been proven be very beneficial in the mental health of officers,” Bray said.

“More officers really does spread out the workload and that makes a tangible difference.”

Bray said the ask is to keep up with the growing population in Regina. He said there were about 190 police officers per 100,000 people 10 years ago. Now it’s about 166 per 100,000 residents.

While crime has gone down, Bray said the number of calls hasn’t. He said police respond to about 20 domestic violence crimes a day, three or four attempted suicides and three or four overdose calls.

Bray said it was challenging to put together a budget in a COVID year because no one knows what the crime stats will do once all the restrictions are lifted.

“I think everybody’s feeling their way through what’s going on right now. There’s some challenges right now when you throw the dart if it hits the bull’s eye or doesn’t just because there’s a lot of unpredictable things happening right now,” Bray said.

Masters said she voted in favour of the police service’s request because the city has under-resourced officers over the past eight years.

“In 2015, meth appeared in our community and there was an explosion in drug crime and the associated violent crime that goes with it. After that came fentanyl and we’re all very familiar with the issues that relates to. There’s a drug trade and an explosion of firearms in our community and we need to catch up so our police officers can deal with what they need to deal with,” Masters said.

The library will have some more money in its pockets this year.

In an 8-3 vote, council approved a 2.9 per cent mill rate increase or an increase of nearly $600,000. That’s going to mean Regina residents will be paying an additional 50 cents a month to make up for it.

The discussion around the library mill rate increase was put over to Thursday because councillors had questions Wednesday, but there was no one from the library to speak to them.

Jeff Barber, library director and CEO, joined council Thursday. He said a portion of the money would go towards paying for staff, who are receiving a two per cent increase. More full-time jobs would also be added.

Barber said there has been a great deal of organizational rethinking over the past few years, saying someone who worked for the library in 2005 might not recognize how things are run now.