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City of Regina officials have detailed the new budget process for the 2026-27 round of deliberations.
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Five special meetings are scheduled this fall to allow city administration to present its budget forecasts to council.
“I think the goal is to have more informed decisions. To know where the ultimate numbers are coming from for both council and the public,” said Mayor Chad Bachynski at a media event on Friday.
“We go along this journey together and ultimately make even more informed decisions because we’ve had even more time to consume the information.”
Bachynski said council received feedback during its last budget cycle on how to improve the budget process.
Acting city manager Jim Nicol, Chief financial officer Daren Anderson and Mayor Chad Bachynski present the city’s new budget process for the 2026-27 round of deliberations on Sept. 5, 2025. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)
Council is once again operating on a two-year budget cycle. Budget talks were pushed from December 2024 to March of this year in order to accommodate the almost entirely new council and mayor who were elected in the fall.
In the past, city administration conducted lots of internal work before drafting budgets, but acting city manager Jim Nicol said the new process lets council and the public view all the steps that go into cost calculations and provide feedback earlier on in the process.
“I think this gives everyone an opportunity to have a much more fulsome understanding. And I think a goal from administration is that the public and members of council can better understand what it does cost to offer services,” said acting city manager Jim Nicol.
“I remain concerned that there is an element out there that thinks that we can do things on the cheap or that we can potentially eliminate one program because no one else will care.
“Well, the city has a number of programs that everybody cares about deeply and we want to make sure that we deliver the best service levels that we can.”
Nicol said the changes will strengthen the respective roles of council and administration and believes the public will get a better sense of potential tradeoffs in budget decisions.
The preliminary estimates that city administration will give to council only represent a hypothetical cost of delivering services, and won’t come with requests for funding or a proposed mill rate increase.
All final decisions on the budget will still need to happen in December.
The meetings will focus on different topics but won’t include budget requests from organizations like Regina Police Service or Regina Exhibition Association Limited (REAL.)
The first of the five meetings was held on Friday, forecasting costs related to governance, leadership and enabling services.
Further meetings are scheduled for Sept. 9, Sept. 16, Sept. 23 and Oct. 3.
According to the meeting report, administration projected a $44.67 million funding shortfall for their $555.67 million estimate outlined for 2026 civic administration.
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