Moose Jaw city council fails to pass finalized budget

By Shawn Slaght

Moose Jaw city council will have to wait at least another week before it finalizes its 2023 operating and capital budget.

City council voted 4-3 on Wednesday night to return the budget to city administration to find one per cent, or about $300,000, in savings through programs and services. Those opposed were councillors Kim Robinson and Crystal Froese and Mayor Clive Tolley.

After going through all of the items laid out for budget deliberations, the city was sitting at a 4.18 per cent mill rate increase, a reduction from the proposed 4.75 per cent mill rate increase.

Director of financial services Brian Acker told city council that, at this point, cuts will have to come out of programs and services offered by the city.

The option of using reserves to bring down the tax increase was talked about, but Acker cautioned against it.

“You can only spend them once. You spend them, they are gone, they are not there the next year to subsidize whatever you’ve done in your operating budget. Reserves are really intended for one-time type of expenditures,” Acker said.

There were also concerns about a proposed $100 parks and recreation infrastructure levy. Acker said the levy is to make up for a shortfall in the capital budget, but could be reduced to $65 to break even.

Coun. Heather Eby said there is no guarantee she’ll vote in favour of any of the cuts, but she wants to see what a cut-down budget looks like.

“On this side of the table, we are questioned by people asking, ‘Can’t you do better?’ I think at least if we have options — and I’m not even saying I’m going to support any one of those options — but at least then we can have some information for the people in the community and say, ‘OK, yes, we could have reduced or we did or whatever, but this is what it looks like,’ ” Eby said.

Also delaying the process is the fact that city council voted to reject the Moose Jaw Police Service’s budget by a vote of 4-3 with councillors Eby, Doug Blanc and Dawn Luhning voting to approve it.

The proposed police budget was for $13.4 million in expenditures and $1.6 million in revenue for a net budget of $11.8 million. The proposed budget would have required a 1.84 per cent mill rate increase that would have brought the total increase to 6.02 per cent.

The concern was funding for vacant police officer positions when there are challenges getting spots in the Saskatchewan Police College.

According to The Police Act, city council cannot tell the police service how to spend its funding as an independent body. So the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners will have to take another look at the budget and bring a revised budget back to city council.