Regina city council to resume budget talks Monday for a fourth day

For a heretofore unconsidered fourth day on Monday, Regina’s city councillors will come together at City Hall to debate the 2024 city budget.

On Friday afternoon, the capital and operations budget and the utilities budgets were separately tabled to Monday.

Much of the reason was to allow time for more information to be gathered by city administration and for councillors to have more time to consider it.

Speaking Friday afternoon, Mayor Sandra Masters didn’t think the whole process was taking too long. She said that during proceedings, councillors had a lot of questions about things like affordability issues, asset management, capital projects and changes in the capital plan.

“I think they’re just looking for some understanding of how that came about and I think at the end of the day, council just wants to try to get it right,” said Masters.

Masters and councillors were vocal during the first three days about their dislike for how the budget was presented this year. Masters said there was a lack of information about past spending decisions and how that spending has borne out through the year.

The mayor made a motion to try to correct that problem, by having administration present the budget documents through accrual accounting, similar to how provincial and federal governments do it. That motion was referred to administration to find out the resources it would take to do that.

Masters said that with the current system, there’s no comparison for how the city has done this financial year, and then councillors have to go through asking for increases based on lack of information.

“I hear often from residents and from individuals who read financial statements a lot and understand budgets (that) it is an impossibility to compare,” she said.

She explained there are amendments that councillors wanted or might have wanted, but there’s information that’s required to discuss the implications.

Masters also wants councillors to get the budget information earlier to allow for more time with it. She said possibly having councillors meet with administration to discuss things ahead of the budget meeting itself could also be helpful.

“I think the good news is there’s tonnes of room for improvement (in the budget process),” she said.

Masters believed the utilities budget could be dealt with on Monday and could likely be passed. There was a motion on the floor to have a one-time reduction on the base rate when things were paused on Friday.

But the mayor wasn’t convinced the rest of the budget would be passed – she suggested it could even be referred back to administration for yet more details.

The budget meeting Monday is set to start at noon.