‘Uncomfortable conversations’: Saskatoon city council eyes cuts to avoid looming 9.9% tax hike

WATCH: Saskatoon city councillors tasked administration with finding additional savings options to lower an upcoming property tax increase Wednesday.

Saskatoon city councillors directed administration to find additional savings options to lower a looming property tax increase on Wednesday.

At the governance and priorities committee meeting, councillors unanimously voted on a series of motions on the city’s financial forecast report that could lower the 2026 property tax increase of 9.90 per cent by as much as four per cent.

“We need to set some sort of tone that these are going to be uncomfortable conversations in November,” Ward 8 Coun. Randy Donauer said.

Donauer asked chief financial officer Clae Hack and his team to not only find savings within the city’s many departments, but also signaled to other groups and organizations that depend on the city for funding — like Discover Saskatoon and Saskatoon’s five business improvement districts — to bring a lean budget request to council when deliberations begin in November.

“I’d like to put a challenge out to any group getting money from us to sharpen their pencil, too,” he said.

“Because I do get the impression at budget sometimes we kind of hold administration to account, but other presenters will come up to the podium and kind of get what they ask for.”

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In the financial forecast report before council, administrators offered options to reduce the property tax increase by one and two per cent.

That seemingly wasn’t good enough for councillors, who asked for more options to increase that scope, aiming to reduce tax increases by three and four per cent, which is up to $28 million in cuts over the next two years.

Hack warned getting a 2026 property tax increase close to 5.9 per cent will mean examining where the city spends its most money.

He said 70 per cent of city money is spent on police, fire, transportation, transit, and corporate services.

“We expect that the scenarios and options that come back will lean heavily on where we spend our money, which is on those areas,” Hack said.

Mayor Cynthia Block showed no interest in reducing the police budget, which on its own accounts for a 4.09 per cent increase to property taxes, hours after hearing from numerous passionate business owners and residents who want more police support.

“Anything that would impact the ability for police to do the work that they need to do, I will not be supporting at budget time,” she said to the committee.

Hack also explained why the city is so dependent on property taxes. He said roughly half of all revenue is generated from property taxes. The other half comes from user fees, like accessing leisure centres, or paid parking, general revenue, and government transfers.

Those are expected to increase by more than three per cent, which does not keep pace with the costs of inflation or population growth and places more reliance on the property tax to cover rising operating costs.

“So that’s where you go into situations where our spending or investment level might go up two per cent,” Hack said. “But the property tax need to fund that might be going up four per cent because the non-property tax revenues aren’t keeping pace.”

The committee will get another update at its August meeting before budget deliberations begin in November.