The city was thrown a curve ball come budget time with the City of Humboldt losing almost $500,000 of provincial funding.
This made for an interesting time for Mayor Rob Muench and his first budget as mayor.
Muench discussed the 2017 budget at the Mayor’s Breakfast put on by the Humboldt and District Chamber of Commerce where he gave his first State of the City address on May 16.
With cuts to the Grants-in-Lieu program, Humboldt’s revenue has dropped $362,514.00 in 2017 and $483,353.00 in 2018.
Priority Based Budgeting served the city well during this time, says Muench, as they took in the impacts of the provincial budget weeks away from passing their own budget.
With the passing of the City of Humboldt budget, city staff are preparing for what will be a difficult 2018 budget.
“We got through this year but 2018 is going to be the real challenging year.”
To make up money lost from the province would require an 8.2 per cent tax increase, says Muench, but that is something city staff have been challenged to avoid when it comes to the passing of the budget.
Council and staff have been striving to release the budget earlier and earlier ever since he was on council, says Muench.
“We’ve got a whole year now to sit down and review different options, to look at our whole operation and say, where can we save some money. What can we do differently, what can we do better.”
Humboldt did see an overall tax increase of 6.4 per cent but this was nothing new for Saskatchewan cities with Yorkton and Melville raising their taxes by 9.4 per cent and 8.36 per cent respectively.
Prince Albert saw the lowest tax increase among the major cities with 1.5 per cent but Muench says they tapped into their reserves to cushion that blow.
With the daunting task of raising revenue while avoiding raising taxes, the city staff will be looking into alternative revenue streams, including paid parking, service fees, user fees, fine increases, hotel destination tax, and facility subsidy decreases or regional contributions, which Muench mentioned in his speech.
The City of Humboldt chose not to do that this year, says Muench.
“We felt our reserves are put away for specific projects that the city is going to be working on.”
The city has been diligent in putting that money away, says Muench, so they did not want to rob that just to meet that budget shortfall.
With Muench as Humboldt’s new mayor and a new Reeve in the RM of Humboldt, regional discussion is becoming more of a thing, says Muench with discussions around problems that everyone seems to be facing.
“We need to learn from each other, what they’ve done to solve their problems so we can do the same.”
Other cities’ ideas for alternative revenue may not be right for Humboldt, says Muench, but it can spark discussion on possibilities that would fit within Humboldt.
Muench says he is confident city staff will take on the challenge of the 2018 budget.
“Now that we’ve got the budget in place, it’s going to be challenging because we have to apply our tax tools to make the decisions that we’ve made work for all the taxpayers.”
With half the councillors also in the same position, Muench gives them an A plus for the hardwork they have been putting into their first six months of council.
“It was almost trial by fire for some of them and myself as well.”
While there has been plenty of doom and gloom, Muench did mention some new excitement coming to Humboldt with new retailers poking around Humboldt and others looking to expand.
