Initial property tax increase in Regina budget talks slightly higher than proposed

City councillors in Regina will be starting from a slightly higher potential property tax increase than was first proposed when they head into 2024 budget deliberations Wednesday.

The plan from administration as presented in November was a 2.2 per cent mill rate increase, representing a $4.40 monthly increase to the average home worth $315,000, or $52.80 a year.

However, at that time, there were a few things in the budget that still hadn’t been finalized. Now, some of those are either final or options have been drawn up, resulting in a new proposed mill rate increase of 2.82 per cent, or $5.51 more a month for the average home for an annual total of $66.12.

The Regina Police Service only finalized its budget in mid-November. It had brought a budget at the end of October, but the Board of Police Commissioners asked the service to go back and make some cuts.

The police budget is about $115.3 million, which is about $1.08 million less than was worked into the proposed budget. That means a proposed mill rate reduction of 0.38 per cent.

The details of Tourism Regina’s return to the city’s fold have been determined now, as well as the city’s tax exemptions policy – neither of which has an impact on the mill rate.

Regina Exhibition Association Limited’s budget is what could create an upward change in the proposal.

The association originally asked for $5.8 million, a big increase from its $1.1-million budget for the previous three years.

Part of the budget deliberations will be city council figuring out how to go about funding REAL in 2024.

City administration is presenting four options, but the one it’s recommending to address the $3.9 million gap for REAL is to reduce capital contributions by $1 million to fund REAL’s capital ask and raise the mill rate to fund the other $2.9 million.

Reducing money to capital will have an impact. The report from administration talks about deferring investment in the Prince of Wales Pathway for three years, reducing funding of the Street Infrastructure Renewal Program, and reducing money into facilities asset management which could impact service delivery if something were to happen as a result of underfunding facilities.

The moving of money would also result in pushing upgrades and replacement of the city’s utilities work and asset management system, which is used to allocate costs and services and helps in reviewing cost of services.

There would also be impacts to the five-year capital plan and the 10-year recreation/culture plan because of a reduction in funding. They would include having to push the creation of a new cricket field back to 2028 from 2027, pushing the Saskatchewan Drive improvements to 2029 at the earliest, and deferring the purchase of land for a new snow storage site to 2029.

The other choices city council could make for REAL would be to completely fund it with a mill rate increase, which would increase it by 1.36 per cent instead of the 0.98 it would be with the recommended path.

If council chose to take all the funding out of the capital budget, it wouldn’t impact the mill rate but would have larger impacts on capital projects.

Council could also choose to fund REAL to a lower level, but the report from administration said that could have serious impacts to REAL and, by extension, the city.

City budget deliberations are to start at 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

Debt limit increase

As part of its budget meetings this week, the city will also have to take a different tack for its debt limit.

Earlier this year, council approved asking the Saskatchewan Municipal Board to increase its debt limit from $450 million to $780 million.

However, the board came back and said it won’t allow that large of an increase, saying it’s too big of a jump. It would prefer more frequent smaller increases, and it wants more detail on the third-party funding sources the city accesses for its capital projects in the future – which the city doesn’t have yet.

The board has indicated it will approved a debt limit increase to $660 million, so council has to approve that request.

Administration said the city’s debt is expected to peak at $437 million in 2024, and that the increase to $780 million would have been better.

“This revision to a debt limit of $660 million reduces the flexibility that the City will have and has the potential to impact some larger capital project plans that are priorities,” read the report.

Administration said in the report that it wants to make sure the Eastern Pressure Solution and Indoor Aquatics Facility will still proceed.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflected corrected figures in REAL’s updated budget ask