City staff plan for restricted budget after SUMA convention
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The over $1 billion provincial deficit and how to solve it was a leading topic at the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association’s (SUMA) recent convention which left many municipal officials wondering what cuts to expect and how to prepare for them.
The convention was held in Saskatoon over the past week and while there were other items on the agenda, the big topic was the newly calculated $1.2 billion deficit the province faces and what it will take to eliminate it.
“What they say is everything is on the table,” North Battleford city manager Jim Puffalt said. “We don’t exactly know where that is going to go. They are just giving us a fair warning to be prepared and we will see what happens on March 22 when the budget comes out.”
Revenue sharing, or as Puffalt called it the “municipal operating grant,” was one of the proposed cuts. The province made a deal with all the municipalities that one per cent of PST revenue would be shared with the municipalities. Puffalt said they refer to it as the “municipal operating grant” because how much a municipality receives depends on the services it provides to the province.
