By Greg Higgins/battlefordsNOW

Council outraged at provincial budget; $2 million in cuts for city

Mar 27, 2017 | 11:53 PM

North Battleford council have voted to look at their legal options after hearing the provincial budget will cut over $2 million from city coffers this year. The news has also forced council to look at a reduction of services to deal with the funding shortfall.

“Well, outrage is putting it lightly, we were absolutely blindsided by this budget,” Bater said. “By Friday we learned that the grants in lieu which come to about $1.1 million, were no longer going to be remitted to the city, even though they are going to continue to be collected by Sask Power and Sask Energy,” said Bater, adding he has been in contact with other mayors to try and get together and figure out a way to combat this decision.

At the North Battleford City Hall meeting Mar. 27, terms like “blindsided… lack of communication… and legal actions,” were stated by council. The news seemed to come as a shock to council.

Shortly after the release of the budget last Wednesday, Bater told battlefordsNOW  he was under the impression the discontinuing of grants in lieu on property tax for Sask Energy and Sask Power wouldn’t affect the city significantly. Bater believed it would just be a loss on the grants on the buildings themselves, before finding it applied to the entire infrastructure the Crown Corporations own in the city. City administration informed council tonight as to the full impact of the changes.

Batter said there is a charge on every residents bill called the “five percent municipal surcharge,” which used to be remitted back to the city but, will now just be collected by the province. Bater added the province signed a contract, which dates back to 1956, obligating it give the money back to municipalities.

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“We want to work with the province to come to a reasonable solution,” Bater said. “Litigation is clearly an option that needs to be considered if it gets that far. Our hope is that there was a mistake made and perhaps the province didn’t consider this fully when they implemented it… These are old contracts. They got back to the 1950’s and there are no clauses that say the funds are subject to the provincial budget at all.”

Council went as far as passing a motion stating it is prepared to take legal action as a last means of reversing the decision by the province.

In the interim, there is still the $2 million in cuts that have to be made and according to Bater, everything is on the table.

“Well it has to be on the table we can’t run a deficit,” Bater said. “That isn’t a luxury a municipality has. The province can do that, the federal government can do that but, we can’t… We have two solutions. We either increase property tax or we cut programs and services. Those are the only two options available to us.”

Bater said in order to cover the entire amount, the city would have to raise property tax an additional 15 per cent on top of the three per cent already being implemented in this year’s budget.

When it comes to programs and services, administration gave an example the Aquatic Centre and Field House requires roughly $1.1 million in funding per year alone.

“We do have a good team here on council and I have a lot of confidence in administration to present us with options but they are not going to be easy,” Bater said. “The province puts us in a very difficult spot here. We are having to be the messenger for their bad news.”

Greg.higgins@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @realgreghiggins.