By Angela Brown

Chamber guests grill finance minister on budget

Mar 31, 2017 | 2:00 PM

Minister of Finance Kevin Doherty was on the hot seat in North Battleford today, March 31, while local leaders grilled him about recent budget cuts.

Roughly 65 members of the public, including chamber members, as well as representatives from City of North Battleford, Town of Battleford, the business community, and from various sectors in the community attended the event hosted by Battlefords Chamber of Commerce.

Doherty believes the austerity budget was needed to push a three-year plan to knock down the province’s $1.2 billion deficit and help balance the budget. He also tried to address the municipalities’ concerns about funding reductions, as well as issues with payments or grants in lieu.

“We have agreed with Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) we are going to sit down with those municipalities affected by  those grants in lieu and talk about a new arrangement,” he said. “They aren’t truly reflective of property taxes that should be paid by facilities. Those facilities do pay their property taxes here in the municipalities across the province, but there are municipal surcharges being applied, particularly for Sask Power and Sask Energy, on people’s bills. We need to ensure we have a formula that is sustainable over the long term.

“Our revenue-sharing in this province has more than doubled for municipalities over the last 10 years, more than doubled in some cases two-and-a-half-times. Moving forward, we need to ensure we have a model that continues to support municipalities, and at the same time provides the province with the ability to pay all of our bills and not run deficits,” Doherty said. “That is what we are looking at doing.” 

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He pointed out he understood the public’s concern, and to offset some of the impact on the local economy as a result of the budget, the province tried to instead offer some reductions in corporate and personal income tax “to put money back into people’s pockets and into businesses’ pockets.”

“This was a tough budget. Any time you are making any major changes in your budget organizations, individuals, institutions and businesses are going to be affected, and people want to understand the impact on them,” Doherty said.

North Battleford Coun. Greg Lightfoot shared his concerns.

“I’m certainly not happy with regards to the payments in lieu decrease we had in the community here. It’s a $1.2 million hit to our bottom line with regard to revenues,” Lightfoot said. “The only way we can rectify that is to either cut services substantially or to raise property taxes. So it’s a shift from the province to the municipality.”

Lightfoot said the city isn’t trying to be confrontational in letting the minister know where the municipality stands on the budget. He said at least the minister mentioned the province would look at some other options.

Government relations minister Donna Harpauer was also expected to make an announcement about the issue.

“We did make our voices heard through SUMA and some meetings we have had, and hopefully there is a response that we can live with,” Lightfoot added.

Following the meeting, chamber president Warren Williams said he was glad to see such a good turnout for the roughly two-hour meeting as an opportunity for the public to get some feedback about its concerns.

“He gave us a summary of the budget, … and some of the rationalization for doing that,” Williams said. “I think our budget was positive for our province. Do I like the fact that everybody has to pay more …? Of course not. But I like the fact we’re not going into further deficits and just pushing things off to future generations. Does it hurt? Of course. Businesses are businesses. We accept the ebb and flow of things, and you make adjustments.

“For the impact to our city, our council has a big job ahead of them. We appreciate that.”

angela.brown@jpbg.ca