‘Tough decisions coming’: Regina mayor speaks to revenue shortfall

With many revenue streams shut off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Regina city council now has to figure out how to pay for essential services and balance the budget.

“This is the issue that every city in Canada faces because everyone decided to defer property and commercial taxes and utility payments,” Mayor Michael Fougere said on the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Thursday.

“Rec facilities are closed so (there’s) no revenue there. The parking revenue that we get, we’re leaning off on that one. And transit as well, we’re losing about a million dollars a month on that one, so that’s lots of money that we’re losing. So we have a shortfall,” Fougere said. “By law, we can’t have a deficit so we have some tough decisions to make.”

There will be a special virtual meeting of city council Wednesday to figure out how to deal with the shortfall of revenue.

Fougere said one option might be to move money from funding capital projects over to paying for operating expenses for things like water, sewer and garbage pickup.

“We need the flexibility as a council to ensure we balance our budget, because under the Cities Act we must balance our budget and that’s a work in progress to be sure. We can’t be borrowing money and end up with a deficit at the end of the year,” Fougere said.

The mayor said the public can expect big decisions coming next week as council figures out how to pay for essential services. Some possibilities on the table include deferring capital projects and finding efficiencies.

Fougere said adding to debt would not be a good idea because there is no way of knowing exactly how long this pandemic will last.

When asked about which capital projects might be on the chopping block, Fougere said he would have to meet with council to see what the list includes. He noted, though, that the city would try to delay the projects by a year or two instead of cancelling them.

As for raising taxes, Fougere said he can’t see that as a reasonable option either.

“I’m not in favour of that at all. If anything at all, we should be reducing them. We have people who are losing their jobs, their companies (and) their homes in some cases. This not the time to be talking about a tax increase so that just will not happen,” Fougere said.

The mayor was asked if this might be a good opportunity to get a jump on road construction, with traffic much lighter than normal. He said that decision will largely depend on what council chooses to do about capital funding at the meeting next week.

Fougere does expect the city to move forward with some construction projects, describing them as part of the economic stimulus and job growth plan.