A downcast-looking Mayor Clive Tolley was blunt in his assessment about what it was like to approve the 2024 budget with a 7.6-per-cent mill rate increase — the experience was awful.
“This is one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. We’ve been working at this for weeks, trying to figure out how we can maintain services without a significant tax increase — it’s not possible,” he said glumly following the Dec. 18 meeting after council voted 4-3 to pass the budget.
During its multi-day discussions, council removed $800,000 from the parks and recreation department operating budget, which means parks staff will cut baseball diamonds every 10 days instead of every five days, Tolley said. Moreover, council nixed the Events Centre’s project to install rigging steel for $1 million, which could help attract bigger stars and shows and create revenue.
“It’s a really tough assignment for myself and council and our administration. And certainly, it gives you kind of a hollow feeling (inside) when you realize that you can’t afford to pay for the things you perhaps need and not simply want,” the mayor said.
Many residents are having trouble paying their monthly bills or rent or utilities, so some landlords may pass on that tax increase, he continued. Therefore, it was “difficult days” working on the budget and he’s glad it’s over for another year.
Tolley agreed that council eliminated some much-needed projects, especially for young families who have kids in baseball. Those parents have told him that other communities — such as Weyburn — have better-maintained ballparks and they want the same here.
“That grates on a person because we’d like to have top-notch facilities …,” said Tolley. “And if we lose some of those tournaments (or) those activities because of the condition of the facilities, that’s a total loss for our community.”
The police service wants to modernize and plans to do that by having new in-car reporting software, which should keep officers more in the community instead of at the station when writing reports, said Tolley. This visible presence could help deter criminals while improving residents’ quality of life.
“Everybody’s a little bit concerned about security downtown (and) security in the parks. And I think increased police presence is a big part of addressing that … ,” he continued.
“So yeah, we had to accept that (police budget request) and keep everything else as close to zero (per cent) as possible to end up with this 7.6 (per cent), which doesn’t feel too good.”
Even though this budget was difficult, Moose Jaw is still doing well compared to other communities, Tolley said. He noted that council agreed to use $6 million from investment earnings for capital projects. If council had to generate that through taxation, that would have led to a significantly higher tax increase.
“The earlier custodians of our investments … did a good job (and) left us in a pretty good financial shape. But, we’re (still) suffering like every other community in not having enough money to pay for our infrastructure renewal,” he stated.
Council cut roughly $9 million in total from the capital budget to balance that account, which some councillors said could make next year’s deficit even worse since projects would be more expensive.
Tolley agreed that this was a concern, saying he wasn’t keen on pushing projects into the future and facing higher expenses.
“I think … it’s kind of like a face-up-to-it budget. We’ve done as best as we could to keep this as low as possible and it’s still not palatable to most people — and it’s not to me, either,” he added. “But it’s something that had to be done in terms of protecting our future.”.
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