By Greg Higgins

Battleford braces for additional costs; hopes revenue sharing will help

Mar 24, 2017 | 5:00 PM

Battleford mayor Ames Lesley said he wasn’t overly surprised on many of the cuts announced in the provincial budget, and is optimistic the town can weather the changes.

Finance minister Kevin Doherty released the new budget Wednesday, which included changes impacting municipalities including the charging of PST on construction and eliminating grants in lieu of property tax on buildings occupied by Sask Power and Sask Energy.

The cuts certainly didn’t surprise Battleford Mayor, Ames Leslie, but he hopes the extra money the town will receive in revenue sharing, due to the town’s population growth, will cancel out any unbudgeted costs.

“Initial take of the budget was to be expected,” Leslie said. “I definitely thought there would have been more cuts. I think that is a tough thing to say, because there was a significant amount of cuts. One of the things that will be on the watch is the PST now on construction.”

Leslie said the town has a number of projects to be completed this year in the budget. He added Battleford’s finance team is looking into how much the difference will be.

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Another change the mayor said his team is keeping a close eye on is the discontinuation of grants in lieu of taxes to municipalities on Sask Power and Sask Energy buildings.

Leslie said his finance team hasn’t come up with an exact number of how much everything will cost the town, but estimated the reduction could be anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000. He hopes to have concrete numbers in the next week.

The mayor added not all news from the budget was as bad as he expected, particularly when it came to revenue sharing. One per cent of PST collected is pooled together and then distributed to municipalities. Leslie added even though there is a five per cent decrease in the amounts municipalities receive; the PST has been increased from five to six per cent, which means a bigger pool.

The Town of Battleford population grew nine percent according to the last census.

“Unconfirmed is they [the province] were going to use the 2015 census,” Leslie said. “If that happens it means a little bit more money back than what we thought we might get.”

Leslie hopes the money Battleford will receive due to its increased population will help balance the elimination of grants and the additional PST on construction. He added there will be tough discussions to be made by council if the town is still in the red after the finance team crunches the numbers.

“I think there will be some hard decisions the council will be put in front of and decide on,” Leslie said. “If we are red $10,000 or if we are red $150,000, there may be some projects to be identified that may have to be pushed over to the next year.”

Leslie couldn’t say what projects would potentially be postponed until the finance team knows exactly how much money they are dealing with.

Greg.higgins@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @realgreghiggins