HUMBOLDT — City council has voted to move ahead with a budget plan that will feature around a 2.4 per cent tax levy increase and spends $1.8 million to complete work at Centennial Park.
The proposed budget was approved at a special meeting Dec. 9.
“This is one of the lowest tax increases for all the cities in the province,” said Rob Muench, Humboldt's mayor. “Staff did a good job, working hard to make sure that we've got a budget that gets a lot done without having big increased taxes like a lot of the other cities are doing right now.”
North Battleford is looking at a two per cent increase for 2020, Yorkton 2.9 per cent, Regina 3.25 per cent and Saskatoon 3.23 per cent.
The largest capital project planned for 2020 is the completion of the Centennial Park. The mayor said the park has been a priority for a number of years and has been something council has been chipping away at.
“We're pretty proud of the fact that we're able to do this with money that we've been putting away into reserves over the years and we're going to draw on that money now to finish this project.”
Muench said there are a few issues that might not see the project completed in 2020. For instance, the city will have to deal with the highways ministry to get an entrance to the park from Highway 5.
The budget will spend $903,000 on paving, with the focus on completing projects on Sixth Avenue, Seventh Avenue and Seventh Street.
“Probably the second biggest [capital project] is going to be the work we're doing on Seventh Street,” Muench said. “We did the water main replacement on that this year and next year, we're going to repave that all and do some finishing on there.”
The mayor said the city is looking at landscaping options for the street, with the expectation that it will look like what was done on Fifth Avenue near the post office.
Almost $1.2 million would go towards replacing water mains and components at two lift stations.
Also noteworthy to the mayor is that the city has a fully funded reserve.
“When we have money in reserves for projects, we actually have money in the bank. In years past, we had a lot of projects that showed reserves on paper, but when push came to shove, there was no money in the bank to do those projects,” he said.
“That was a pretty big feat to get all that money in place. We've had surpluses over the last number of years and we're able to use that money to put away into funds so we don't have to borrow money for projects, which was the case a lot of times in the past.”
The city is expecting to see a reduction in the city’s debt by over $485,000 from $3.8 million at the beginning of 2020 to $3.4 million by the end. There are no plans to acquire any more external loans in 2020.
Muench said he commended city staff for the effort needed to get the budget ready before the end of the year.
“The last number of years been laid out very clearly and it's easy for not only council but for the general public to understand where the money is coming from.”
