City of Regina examining 5.29% mill rate increase for 2024

It looks like property taxes in Regina could be going up more than expected.

A proposed mill rate increase of 5.29 per cent was presented at a meeting of the city’s executive committee Wednesday at City Hall.

That number is higher than the 4.66 per cent increase that was projected for 2024 in last year’s budget deliberations. That’s when the city went to a multi-year approach to budgeting.

If the proposal mill rate increase is approved, the average homeowner could expect to pay $20 more per month than was expected.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Coun. Andrew Stevens said some of the numbers don’t make sense.

“The police, which is a fraction of the size of the city, (requires an) almost two per cent mill rate increase, but (funding) services that benefit a quarter of a million people only requires a 0.5 per cent (increase),” he said.

Stevens also said the presented mill rate increases for recreation infrastructure, advancing strategic priorities and eastern pressure solution project show that council has been “kicking the can” for the past 20 years.

“So now we’re paying more for projects that – I don’t know – maybe a decade ago, people said, ‘No, we’ll let someone else worry about it,’ ” he added.

Those increases are 0.50, 2.03 and 0.63 per cent, respectively.

Diving deeper into the new cost pressures associated with maintaining services, the city estimated winter road maintenance could cost around $2 million, and fuel, emergency shelters and transit and parking revenue reduction not recovering fully from COVID-19 could each cost around $1 million.

Coun. Shanon Zachidniak raised some concerns when it comes to transit revenue not recovering fully from COVID-19.

In response, Kurtis Doney — the city’s acting executive director of citizen services — said the city’s going through third-quarter bearings right now and is looking at it very closely.

“The transit revenue is something that is fluctuating. The ridership has returned. The revenue is getting closer to returning, but we will adjust this as the budget gets finalized and be able to get more accurate information as we go forward,” Doney added. “But … it definitely changes month by month as we get further away from COVID-19.”

It’s unclear what the budget ask will be for Regina Exhibition Association Ltd. (REAL) due to an ongoing review, the city’s presentation said.

City administration is expected to discuss the final mill rate increase in the middle of November. City council would then debate the new mill rate before approving in the next few months.