In a balancing act of what to prioritize while keeping property tax increases predictable, City of Regina administration has proposed its 2027 budget with a 5.81 per cent property tax hike. “[We] had our marching orders,” acting city manager Jim Nicol told reporters as part of a preliminary budget briefing Thursday. “It takes a bit of the emotional baggage out of administration trying to say, ‘Well, we think this is what council wants,’ or trying to guess. Having a target to me was very important.” Throughout the summer, council began its look at the budget with the strategic imperative of achieving a 5.81 per cent mill rate increase to keep Regina’s property taxes within the lowest 25 per cent among comparator cities. In the over 600-page budget document released Thursday, administration’s proposed budget sets expected revenue and expenses at $734 million, $58 million more than the year previous. The proposed mill rate increase is expected to generate $22 million in new revenue. The remaining funding gap will be covered by federal and provincial funding, grants and other income streams, according to the city. Acting CFO Jeff May says the proposed budget focuses on its priorities such as infrastructure renewal – in the form of road and water network improvements – and funding for core amenities and services such as city transit, police and the fire department. “The increase in operating expenses can be explained with a few simple key words: infrastructure, public safety and transit,” May said. “More than 70 per cent of the operating expenses increase is concentrated to those categories. These are the core priorities residents rely on.” Administration highlighted that $122 million is slated for the continued construction of the city’s indoor aquatics facility while $20 million will go towards upgrading street infrastructure and renewing sidewalks. Over $11 million will support Regina Transit – with $5 million for day-to-day operations while $7 million will go towards purchasing new buses. The Regina Police Service (RPS) is slated to receive $124.8 million for its net operating budget – which represents a 2.30 mill rate increase over the 2026 budget. Staff salaries and contractual operational expenses account for 2.15 of the 2.30 mill rate increase. The Regina Fire and Protective Services (RFPS) will receive $12 million to support operations, salaries in addition to expanding the city’s firetruck fleet. May said forces like an uncertain economical picture, tariffs and soaring energy prices are also impacting the city. “It feels like it’s a moving target sometimes to try and get to an estimate,” he said. “However, the thing we always have to keep in mind is a budget is a point in time estimate – it’s our best knowledge at that point in time. Eventually, we have to wrap it up; we can’t be crunching numbers till the 11th hour and here we are today with our best estimate.” There is also an increased priority in replenish many of the city’s depleted reserves. “The best time to have started saving for these reserves, to make sure that we had the cash on hand to make infrastructure investments in the future, was 20 years ago,” May outlined. “The next best time is today. I’m very appreciative of the fact they’ve taken that on.” Affordability top of mind The 5.81 per cent mill rate hike amounts to an increase of about $13.56/month - $163 annually – for the average Regina home valued at $324,000. Utility rates are set to increase at a proposed 10.27 per cent – a representation of approximately $19.60 per month. In addition to the Regina Public Library’s dedicated mill rate of 14.99 per cent, the average Regina resident is expected to see city expenses increase close to $36/month or $432/year. May believes his team struck the right balance between affordability and required service levels. “Total municipal property taxes represent less than three per cent of annual household income, even across varying home values and income levels,” he outlined. “Property taxes remain a relatively small portion of overall household income, while funding a wide range of municipal services residents use every day.” It also meant some tough decisions had to be made and many potential enhancements were canned or delayed. “This proposed budget reflects the cost of keeping the lights on and of delivering services as they are today,” May added. “However, to fit into the strategic imperative, we did have to choose some judicious cuts. There’s about $1.4 million in service reductions we identified.” “That’s the cost of doing what we’re doing today with a slight reduction to fit under this interim.” Administration found the $1.4 million in savings through seven measures: How does this compare? Looking at the past 10 years of tax increases in Regina, 2027’s projected 5.81 per cent mill rate hike is slightly above average but is well below last year’s. Council’s target comes the year after it approved the highest single-year property increase in the city’s history at 10.9 per cent. However, that was well down from the over 15 per cent forecast administration presented going into deliberations. “[Last year’s budget] started with a very high number,” Nicol recalled. “And council said, ‘We can’t do that.’ Council’s objective has been to provide the public with, ‘We appreciate there’s going to be increases, but can we make them more predictable or understandable?” Elected in November 2024, this current iteration has been through two budget cycles, approving a 7.3 per mill rate hike in 2025 before last year’s 10.9 – totalling over 18 per cent the past two years. Although in 2025, most council members had been in the role less than two months when the budget was approved that year. Other factors, like the indoor aquatics facility – approved by the previous council – in part attributed to the stark hike in 2026. The final two budgets of the previous council saw mill rate increases of 3.67 per cent in 2023 and 2.85 per cent in 2024. Nicol says those decisions are still impacting the city today and warned what happens next month may have future implications. “5.81 [per cent] is going to be tough to reach, politically, because residents want various levels of service,” he described. “All that’s trying to say is for people out there who are saying, ‘Cut taxes, hold the line at zero,’ don’t hold your breath: it’s not going to happen.” “Anybody out there who’s thinking hold the line at one, two or zero per cent, that’s incredibly unlikely and it has huge negative impacts,” Nicol added. When are deliberations? Still, this budget is only a proposal. Council is set for its full budget deliberations over five days between Dec. 7 and Dec. 11. As is historically customary for budget talks, councillors will hear from the public their opinion and receive presentations from service partners before questioning administration and tabulating the final spends for next year. With this new 5.81 per cent starting point, council members have the option to scale it up to enhance services or slide it down with further cuts. “It’s in their hands now,” Nicol said. Having gone through the preliminary budget discussions earlier this year, Nicol says those talks were productive in setting the budget and helped in administration’s preparation for December. “People are going to chew on that quite readily, but I think there’s also a number of people out there who appreciate what is going on,” he said. “We haven’t invested sufficiently in our infrastructure over many years: it’s catch-up time because the story we don’t want is all our pipes are failing.” He also hoped the public welcomed the transparency. “People live with financial targets in their life every day; so why shouldn’t the levels of government?” Nicol added. “It costs money to have nice things and it costs money to keep things running as [we] want them to. We can shut down a lot of things tomorrow, but that does not make a city most people want to live in.”
